Asa Kalish

My research career has been centered on two fundamental interests:

(1) Can we quantitatively model living systems using physics, to develop methods to engineer them?

(2) What is the role of fluctuations in building a robust, yet plastic system?

Though my work spans from organelles to tissues, these themes drive the research:

(1) Srivastava V.*, Hu J.L.*, Garbe J.C., Veytsman B., Shalabi S.F., Yllanes D., Thomson M., LaBarge M.A., Huber G., and Gartner Z.J. Configurational entropy is an intrinsic driver of tissue structural heterogeneity. BioRxiv 2023.

This manuscript is currently under revision, after which I will be listed as third author. For these revisions I am contributing 3D quantification of cell shapes to establish tissue fluidity in human primary mammary organoids. I also developed a traction force assay to assess how cell contractility and motility change under different pharmacological perturbations. Finally, I identified small molecule inhibitors which promote structural order in both wildtype and oncogene-expressing organoids.

(2) Rajan D., Makushok T., Kalish A., et al. Single-cell analysis of habituation in Stentor coeruleus. Current Biology: CB. 2023 Jan;33(2):241-251.e4.

(3) Amiri, K.*, Kalish, A.*, and Mukherji S. Robustness and Universality in Organelle Size Control. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2023; 130(1): 018401.  

* These authors contributed equally.