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Coarse-grained, mesoscale simulations are invaluable for studying soft condensed matter because of their ability to model systems in which a background solvent plays a significant role but is not the primary interest. Such methods generally…

Engineering synthetic materials that mimic the remarkable complexity of living organisms is a fundamental challenge in science and technology. We study the spatiotemporal patterns that emerge when an active nematicfilm of microtubules and…

We use a continuum, two-fluid approach to study a mixture of two active nematic fluids. Even in the absence of thermodynamically-driven ordering, for mixtures of different activities we observe turbulent microphase separation, where domains…

Cells are fundamental building blocks of living organisms displaying an array of shapes, morphologies, and textures that encode specific functions and physical behaviors. Elucidating the rules of this code remains a challenge. In this work,…

Active matter, as other types of self-organizing systems, relies on the take-up of energy that can be used for different actions, such as active motion or structure formation. Here we provide an agent-based framework to model these…

Active matter agents consume internal energy or extract energy from the environment for locomotion and force generation. Already rather generic models, such as ensembles of active Brownian particles, exhibit phenomena, which are absent at…

We review recent advances in the design, synthesis, and modeling of active fluids. Active fluids have been at the center of many technological innovations and theoretical advances over the past two decades. Research on this new class of…

Active gels are a class of biologically-relevant material containing embedded agents that spontaneously generate forces acting on a sparse filament network. In vitro experiments of protein filaments and molecular motors have revealed a…

We computationally study suspensions of slow and fast active Brownian particles that have undergone motility induced phase separation and are at steady state. Such mixtures, of varying non-zero activity, remain largely unexplored even…

The spontaneous creation of disclinations is a defining characteristic of active nematics, which is rarely observed in equilibrium systems or other active matter systems. Thus, understanding the mechanics of disclinations is crucial for…

Filamentous cyanobacteria can show fascinating examples of nonequilibrium self-organization, which however are not well-understood from a physical perspective. We investigate the motility and collective organization of colonies of these…

Dense active matter, from bacterial suspensions and microtubule bundles driven by motor proteins to cellular monolayers and synthetic Janus particles, is characterised by mesoscale turbulence, the emergence of chaotic flow structures. By…

Active matter comprises self-driven units, such as bacteria and synthetic microswimmers, that can spontaneously form complex patterns and assemble into functional microdevices. These processes are possible thanks to the out-of-equilibrium…

We study dry, dense active nematics at both particle and continuous levels. Specifically, extending the Boltzmann-Ginzburg-Landau approach, we derive well-behaved hydrodynamic equations from a Vicsek-style model with nematic alignment and…

We propose an agent-based model of active flexible rods. Inspired by cytoskeletal flows, we introduce activity by an internal flow that contributes to the dissipative forces. The active force between our agents is central and reciprocal,…

We investigate photo-responsive structure formation in a minimal model of dry active nematics. Combining microscopic simulations with the analysis of the corresponding hydrodynamic theory, we show that the system generically self-assembles…

The investigation of spatio-temporal dynamics of bacterial cells and their molecular components requires automated image analysis tools to track cell shape properties and molecular component locations inside the cells. In the study of…

We use computer simulations to study the onset of collective motion in systems of interacting active particles. Our model is a swarm of active Brownian particles with internal energy depot and interactions inspired by the dissipative…

Dormancy is an essential strategy for microorganisms to cope with environmental stress. However, global ecosystem models typically ignore microbial dormancy, resulting in major model uncertainties. To facilitate the consideration of…

Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…