Introduction to the Mechanics and Dynamics of Soft Living Matter

This course introduces the concepts of soft condensed matter and their use in understanding the mechanical properties, dynamic behavior, and self-assembly of living biological materials. We will take an engineering approach that emphasizes the application of fundamental physical concepts to a diverse set of problems taken from the literature, including mechanical properties of biopolymers and the cytoskeleton, directed and random molecular motion within cells, aggregation and collective movement of cells, and phase transitions and critical behavior in the self-assembly of lipid membranes and intracellular structures.