Matilda Backholm

Forces and symmetry breaking of a living meso-swimmer - Communications Physics The physics of swimming at the mesoscale, where nonlinear and time-dependent fluid mechanics prevail, remains poorly understood. Here, the authors use a micropipette force sensor and deep neural netwo...

New paper out in @commsphys.nature.com by Rafael Ayala Lara & Sharadhi Nagaraja et al.

Forces and symmetry breaking of a living meso-swimmer
doi.org/10.1038/s420...

Funded by @erc.europa.eu & Research Council of Finland

The annual meeting of the Finnish Physical Society "Physics Days" will be held at Aalto University from March 4th to 6th, 2026.
events.aalto.fi/en/3X3IKxA7/...

Photo from King's college chapel

Had a fantastic time visiting DAMTP in Cambridge this week. What a stunning academic setting and beautiful old campus.

Sun rising over beach

9th International Soft Matter Conference, Crete.

Photo of wall with the text "Welcome back Matilda we missed you a lot"

First day back on campus after my vacation. Did I tell you I have the best group?

New #JRSocInterface paper: Soft matter mechanics of immune cell aggregates. Read more: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #biomechanics @matildabackholm.bsky.social

📣 New paper alert:

"Soft matter mechanics of immune cell aggregates" now out in J. Roy. Soc. Interface @royalsocietypublishing.org

doi.org/10.1098/rsif...

Project led by Shohreh Askari and Guillem Saldo Rubio in a wonderful, multidisciplinary collaboration with Prof. Fagerholm @helsinki.fi

Congrats!!

I'm looking for a doctoral researcher with a MSc degree in physics and a keen interest to perform cutting-edge experiments in biological, fluid, and soft matter physics. See all details here: www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

I'm looking for a postdoc with a PhD degree in physics and experience in experimental biological, fluid, and/or soft matter physics research. See all details here: www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...

📣 Open PhD and postdoc positions in my Living, Fluid, & Soft Matter group. These new researchers will work in my ERC StG project SWARM. Application deadline 3.8.2025. See links and details in the comments below.

Congrats on the cover and the beautiful work!

This is such a cool new paper from the @bhamlalab.bsky.social with a fun discovery of kink instabilities in jumping nematodes. I was also happy to see that my old PhD data on C. Elegans bending stiffness was useful.

"Taken together, we can conclude that women — already dramatically underrepresented at the highest levels of physics — are further underrepresented in last authorship in prestigious journals."

Excellent effort by Prof. Alannah Hallas.

Focus on research and supervision 🥂

I really needed this. I will print this, have it on my desk, and re-read it a few times a year.

Congrats!

Big congrats, Jose! Well deserved and sounds like an exciting project!

What a wonderful collection of people! I'd love to join as well.

True, just me being slow 😄

Thanks for sharing! It's starting to look like the best approach also on the physics side.

Autch

👌

That's really good to know. Is it generally better to upload after journal submission? Most are fine with the paper being in arxiv also before the formal submission?

So the citations are not sonehow magically combined once the real paper is out? I thought that arxiv works a bit against scooping, that an arxiv paper sort of sets the date for the discovery?

Good point! It's really nice if the community can provide its own group review.

Thanks for sharing! I think I just need a small final push over the energy barrier of reluctance :)

Getting early feedback and follow-up collaborators are great benefits! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! I am somehow stuck with the need for the peer-review stamp of approval before sharing our work with the rest of the world. But then again, we have also presented it at conferences already, so it doesn't make much sense.