Event
Bioengineering Seminar Series: Yu-li Wang
Friday, April 8, 2011
11:00 a.m.
Room 1200, Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Professor William Bentley
bentley@umd.edu
Cellular Sensing and Actuation through Mechanical Interactions with Adhesive Materials
Yu-li Wang
Professor and Chair
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Our research is focused on mechanical events of adherent cells from cellmigration to mechanosensing, using a combination of micromanipulation, materials, and imaging approaches. Adherent cells exert mechanical forces on the surrounding environment. While earlier attention has focused on the function of such forces in cell migration, subsequent studies have suggested an equally important function for cells to sense their physical environment such as rigidity, as well as their own functional states such as shape and migration, based on a universal, force-sensitive mechanism. The presentation will emphasize recent results using cells constrained on micropatterned surfaces to facilitate the exploration of these questions.
