Dr. Nicholas Kurniawan

About

Nicholas Kurniawan received his PhD in 2012 from the National University of Singapore (Singapore), studying the role of matrix viscoelasticity in cancer metastasis. He then carried out postdoctoral research as a Marie Curie Fellow at AMOLF (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), investigating the hierarchical structure-property relation in the cytoskeleton and extracellular matrices. In 2015, he joined Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, as an Assistant Professor in the research group Soft Tissue Engineering and Mechanobiology (department of Biomedical Engineering). He is also a member of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (ICMS).

Presentation Abstract

Stimulating cells: a physical and mechanical perspective. The extracellular environment defines a physical boundary condition with which cells need to negotiate. It has been known for many years that physical and mechanical cues, such as confinement substrate topography, and stretch, can dramatically alter cell phenotype. However, the scale of such effects as well as the underlying mechanisms are still poorly understood. To explore cellular response to this range of cues, our group has developed bottom-up experimental platforms that allows systematic monitoring of cell phenotype on a library of 2D micropatterned substrates and 3D structures in biomimetic setups. I will discuss how a rich variety of cell responses can emerge from an interplay between actin dynamics, force generation, nuclear mechanics, and adhesion morphology.