Name: Seminar by Professor Mingming WU (Cornell University)
Start: 2025-12-09T14:30:00+08:00
End: 2025-12-09T15:30:00+08:00
Location: Rm G25, Science Centre North Block, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Seminar by Professor Mingming WU (Cornell University)

In living systems, cells are constantly sensing, adapting and migrating to where life is better. Bacteria move to where food is abundant, immune cells migrate to where pathogenic attacks take place, and stem cells within embryos differentiate and migrate to correct locations to form various body parts. Cells’ ability to make robust and precise decisions as to where to go next in a noisy environment is critical for their survival and fitness. In this talk, I will discuss my lab’s journey in finding how bacteria and mammalian cells sense, compute, adapt and make a movement decision. We use microfluidic device to model the chemical and mechanical environment for cells, optical imaging to follow cell dynamics and theoretical modeling to formulate the basic principles. Escherichia coli bacteria, sperm and breast tumor cells are used as examples for these studies. I will highlight critical roles adaptation plays in cells’ movement decision processes.