[ active & living matter lab ]
explore our on-going projects here.
Principal Investigator
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Tzer Han Tan is an Assistant Professor of Physics at UC San Diego. He leads a research lab developing living and synthetic active matter systems to better understand physical principles that underlie complexity in collective behavior. Before joining UC San Diego, he was a ELBE Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems. Tzer Han received his Ph.D. in Physics at MIT and his B.S. in Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University. Tzer Han has received the William A. Lee Chancellor's Endowed Junior Faculty Fellowship and the Hellman Fellowship.​
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Research directions:
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Nonreciprocal robotic active matter​
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Emergence of memory, adaptation and learning
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Manifold learning in tissue morphogenesis
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News
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Feb 2026: Tzer Han has received a DARPA Defense Science Office (DSO) Pitch Day award! With co-PI Prof. Gravish and Prof. Boechler, they will develop robotic swarms as programmable states of matter.
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Aug 2025: Shiqi Liu joins the lab, working on physical learning in nonreciprocal robotic matter. Welcome Shiqi!​
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July 2025: Tzer Han has been selected as UCSD Hellman Fellows. Congratulations!
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Mar 2025: Strong showing from the lab at the 2025 APS Global Physics Summit. Kiet presented the MASBot work and Wyatt presented the morphogenesis work.
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team members
Undergraduate Students
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Zenghong He (Electrical Engineering, Class of 2026)
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Hrithik Yash (Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2027)
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Eyad Alqatari (Physics, Class of 2028)
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Feiyi Ruan (Computer Science)
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Haruhiko Akimoto (Physics, Class of 2027)
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Jeremy Lin (Electrical Engineering, Class of 2027)​​
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Logan Wong (Electrical Engineering, Class of 2027)
Alumni
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Yutao Deng (currently Masters at CMU)
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Zeyu Qi (soon Masters at Columbia U)
our team is recruiting
We are looking for motivated and creative undergraduate/PhD/postdocs to join our team!
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In particular, the active research directions in the lab are:
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Chiral active matter, with a focus on phase transitions, the role of disorder and collective dynamics using marine invertebrate embryos (e.g. P. miniata, Platynereis) as model
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Nonreciprocal robotic active matter, with a focus on designing odd elasticity, nonreciprocal phase transiton and active learning using our newly developed p-atic robotic active matter.
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Chiral morphogenesis, with a focus on chiral symmetry breaking in marine embryos, morphological landscape of organoids, optogenetics, tissue mechanics and mechanochemical coupling
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Our lab is primarily an experimental soft matter/biophysics lab with plenty of opportunities to collaborate with theory groups. We aim to combine experiments with creative data analysis to understand how symmetry, order and dynamics emerge in living matter. ​
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Postdocs. Please email Tzer Han directly with CV and a short statement of interest. We welcome applicants from diverse and international background.
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PhD and undergraduate students. Students already at UCSD can contact Tzer Han directly. Otherwise, you can apply to the Physics PhD program here. Deadline Dec 18, 2024.
publication
Three phases of odd robotic active matter
Bo F, Liu S, He Z, Joyce W, Leech G, Tran K, Ramirez K, Boechler N, Gravish N, Zhao H, Tan TH^
Preprint available (2026). Submitted.
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Light-induced cortical excitability reveals programmable shape dynamics in starfish oocytes.
Liu J*, Burkart T*, Ziepke A, Reinhard J, Chao YC, Tan TH, Swartz SZ, Frey E, Fakhri N.
Nature Physics (2025).
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Quantifying irreversibility of ecological systems.
Li J, Munch S, Tan TH, Song CL.
Preprint on bioRxiv (2024). Submitted.
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Emergent chirality in active solid rotation of pancreas spheres.
Tan TH*, Amiri A*, Barandiaran IS*, Staddon M, Hermann A, Tomas S, Duclut C, Papovic M, Julicher F, Grapin-Botton A.
PRX Life (2024).
[ Research Highlight in Physics News ]
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Odd dynamics of living chiral crystals.
Tan TH*, Mietke A*, Li J, Chen Y, Higinbotham H, Gokhale S, Foster PJ, Dunkel J, Fakhri N.
Nature (2022), 607(7918), 287-293
[ News and Views | Nature Video | MIT news | sciencealert.com | New Scientist | Discover magazine ]
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Mapping and exploring the organoid state space using synthetic biology.
Tan TH*, Liu J*, Grapin-Botton A.
Seminars in Cell and Developmental Biology (2022). Academic Press.
Polarized Dishevelled dissolution and condensation drives embryonic axis specification in oocytes.
Swartz SZ, Tan TH, Perillo M, Fakhri N, Wessel GM, Cheeseman IM, Wikramanayake I.
Current Biology (2021). 31(24), 5633-5641.
Scale-dependent irreversibility in living matter.
Tan TH*, Watson GA*, Chao YC*, Gingrich TR, Horowitz JM, and Fakhri N.
Preprint on arXiv (2021). Submitted.
A hierarchy of protein patterns robustly decodes cell shape information.
Wigbers M*, Tan TH*, Brauns F, Jinghui L, Swartz Z, Frey E, Fakhri N.
Nature Physics (2021).
Topological turbulence in the membrane of a living cell.
Tan TH*, Liu J*, Miller PW*, Tekant M, Dunkel J, and Fakhri N.
Nature Physics (2020).
[ PDF | Nature Physics cover art | MIT news | phys.org | physicsworld.com | Research highlight in Nature ]
Self-organized stress patterns drive state transitions in actin cortices.
Tan TH*, Malik-Garbi M*, Abu-Shah E*, Li J, Sharma A, MacKintosh FC, Keren K, Schmidt CF and Fakhri N.
Science Advances (2018). 4(6), p.eaar2847.
[ F1000 article recommendation ]
Cho WK, Jayanth N, Mullen S, Tan TH, Jung YJ and Cissé II.
Scientific reports (2016). 6, p.35949.
How grow-and-switch gravitropism generates root coiling and root waving growth responses in Medicago truncatula.
Tan TH, Silverberg JL, Floss DS, Harrison MJ, Henley CL and Cohen I,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2015). 112(42), pp.12938-12943.
[ Research highlight in Nature Physics | Cornell Chronicle ]
(*denotes co-first authors)
Google scholar profile here.
recent talks
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