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Active nematics are materials composed of mobile, elongated particles that can transform energy from the environment into a mechanical motion. Current experimental realizations of the active nematics are of biological origin and include…
Understanding the complexity of fragmentation processes is essential for regulating intercellular communication in mechanistic biology and developing novel bottom-up approaches in a large range of multiphase flow processes. In this context,…
Most of the grand challenges of humanity today involve complex agent-based systems, such as epidemiology, economics or ecology. However, remains as a pending task the challenge of identifying the general principles underlying their…
Living organisms have developed advanced motion strategies for efficient space exploration, serving as inspiration for the movements of microrobots. These real-life strategies often involve anomalous dynamics displaying random movement…
In this book chapter, we review how systems of simple motile agents can be used as a pathway to intelligent systems. It is a well known result from nature that large groups of entities following simple rules, such as swarms of animals, can…
Since their invention, plastics have become ubiquitous in modern societies all around the world, and their impact on the environment has, in recent years, become nearly as well-known. Plastics produced by humans have reached nearly every…
The self-organization of microbial ecosystems involves a large variety of mechanisms, ranging from biochemical signaling to population dynamics. Among these, the role of motility regulation has been little studied, despite the importance of…
Interactions among biologically active agents is facilitated by their self-generated chemical and hydrodynamic fields. In order to elucidate the pair-wise interactions between such micro-organisms, we employ active droplets as a model…
The design of intelligent materials often draws parallels with the complex adaptive behaviors of biological organisms, where robust functionality stems from sophisticated hierarchical organization and emergent long-distance coordination…
At the heart of the structured architecture and complex dynamics of biological systems are specific and timely interactions operated by biomolecules. In many instances, biomolecular agents are spatially confined to flexible lipid membranes…
We present a model of active particles interacting through a dynamic, heterogeneous environment, leading to emergent collective behaviors without direct agent-to-agent communication. Expanding the resource-dependent framework introduced in…
Self-propulsion plays a crucial role in biological processes and nanorobotics, enabling small systems to move autonomously in noisy environments. Here, we theoretically demonstrate that a bound skyrmion-skyrmion pair in a synthetic…
Active systems -- including sperm cells, living organisms like bacteria, fish, birds, or active soft matter systems like synthetic ''microswimmers'' -- are characterized by motility, i.e., the ability to propel using their own ''engine''.…
Molecular motors are essential to the living, they generate additional fluctuations that boost transport and assist assembly. Self-propelled colloids, that consume energy to move, hold similar potential for the man-made assembly of…
Micro-scale swimming robots have been envisaged for many medical applications such as targeted drug delivery, where the microrobot will be expected to navigate in a fluid through channels carrying a payload. Alternatively, in many cases,…
Swimming micro-organisms such as flagellated bacteria and sperm cells have fascinating locomotion capabilities. Inspired by their natural motion, there is an ongoing effort to develop artificial robotic nano-swimmers for potential in-body…
Many chemotactic bacteria inhabit environments in which chemicals appear as localized pulses and evolve by processes such as diffusion and mixing. We show that, in such environments, physical limits on the accuracy of temporal gradient…
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…
Autonomous agentic systems are increasingly deployed in regulated, high-stakes domains where decisions may be irreversible and institutionally constrained. Existing safety approaches emphasize alignment, interpretability, or action-level…
Living systems routinely consume energy to achieve motility, often using intricate biomolecular machinery. In this work, we show that active droplets can sustain indefinite self-propulsion of a spherical colloid in an otherwise homogeneous,…