Prof. Abhijit Majumder's Talk

Mar 23, 2017 - 17:00

Mar 23, 2017 - 18:00

Rm. No. 118 Ground floor Chemical Engg. Dept.

Seminars

Prof. Abhijit Majumder Department of Chemical Engineering IIT Bombay

Abstract: Every tissue and organ in our body has specific and defined physico-chemical micro-environment. While the importance of bio-chemical signals is known and under investigation for long only in last decade we have started to appreciate the roles of physical/mechanical signals in determining cells' function and fate. Mechanical signals such as substrate modulus substrate topology shear stress stretching vibration etc have been shown to influence cell survival cell spreading cell division migration and differentiation. Mechano-signals and their transduction into biological signals are important to maintain our healthy life. In many diseased conditions cancer tissue rigidity and cellular ability to sense the mechanical properties of the surroundings have been reported to get altered. In this talk I will present the overview of cell mechanics and a glimpse of different research projects from our laboratory. In particular I will discuss our ongoing work on cellular patterning using sub-surface microstructures. We have demonstrated that a rigid sphere embedded in a soft substrate influences cellular migration at the surface of the substrate resulting into formation of long-range patterns. This process is majorly governed by physical parameters such as substrate rigidity and thickness and independent of the type of extra-cellular matrix or cell types.Bio-sketch: Abhijit Majumder received his PhD from the Department of Chemical Engineering IIT Kanpur in 2010. His doctoral research was on adhesion and soft mechanics. In 2010 he moved to inStem Bangalore and then in 2012 to Harvard Medical School Boston for his Post-Doctoral research on cell mechanics and microfluidic devices respectively. Abhijit spent one year in 2013 in inStem Bangalore as Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance Early Career Fellow before joining IIT Bombay in 2014 as an assistant professor. His present research interest includes stem cell cell mechanics and microfluidics. It is compulsory for CL702 and CL704 students.