Recent news

2025

APS March Meeting, Anaheim, CA

I was honored to be selected as finalist in the GSNP Postdoctoral Speaker Award Session! I gave a talk "Tuning the glassy dynamics in models of dense epithelial tissue," about our recent work on the anomalous disordered dynamics of the 2d Voronoi cell model.

March 2025

Screenshot from the Communications Physics page for the research article "Unveiling universal aspects of the cellular anatomy of the brain" showing that it is in the top 25 downloaded papers of 2024.

Communications Physics Collection: Top 25 downloaded papers of 2024

My paper "Unveiling universal aspects of the cellular anatomy of the brain" was the second most downloaded paper published in Communications Physics in 2024!

March 2025

2024

SLAAM Seminar

I gave an invited SLAAM seminar on my ongoing work on unusual materials of the 2d Voronoi model entitled "Tunable rheology in models of dense cellular tissue."

Watch the recording of the talk here.

December 2024

View from the window at the KITP showing mountains and the ocean

KITP Program on Active Solids

I spent four glorious weeks in sunny Santa Barbara participating in the KITP program "Active Solids: From Metamaterials to Biological Tissue."

October-November 2024

Screenshot from the online recording of Helen's talk at the KITP. The image shows a slide from the presentation and a smaller camera image of Helen presenting.

KITP Conference: The many faces of active mechanics

I gave an invited talk "Tunable rheology in models of dense cellular tissue" about my ongoing work on the unusual material properties of geometric cell models. This was a highly engaging conference and a great way to kick off the program on active solids!

Watch the recording of the talk here.

October 2024

Scientific figure with four panels showing the dynamical heterogeneities for different values of the parameter p0. The dynamical heterogeneities become less pronounced at higher p0.

New paper out on arXiv!

My paper "Tunable glassy dynamics in models of dense cellular tissue" is out on the arXiv. In it we show that by varying a characteristic parameter in the 2d Voronoi cell model, the disordered dynamics change between a standard glassforming regime and a highly anomalous regime that shows power-law divergence of dynamical properties with temperature, and suppressed dynamical heterogeneities.

August 2024

Helen, a white woman with brown hair, and her friend Xinyu, a Chinese woman, standing either side of a sign welcoming participants to the ISMC conference.

International Soft Matter Conference (ISMC), Raleigh, NC

I presented a poster "Stokes-Einstein (non)-violation in models of dense cellular tissue."

July-August 2024

Image of a slide from the IPoLS workshop showing the program overview. There are four columns outlining the four sessions in the workshop.

IPoLS Workshop - Introduction to Scientific Programming in Python

I designed and ran a workshop attended by 30 students (senior undergraduates and early year graduate students from across the country) that introduced key concepts in scientific programming that are important in biophysics research. Over two days, we covered a broad range of topics including:

Numerical methods for solving differential equations
Creating scientific figures
Working with real biological data
Organizing your research data
Virtual environments and managing packages
Using the command line
Using git for version control
Overview of machine learning methods

July 2024

Paper published in Communications Physics!

My paper "Unveiling universal aspects of the cellular anatomy of the brain" based on my postdoctoral work at Northwestern has now been published in Communications Physics. In this work we showed that the cellular structur of the brain shows signatures of being at or close to a critical point and that key structural features of the cellular structure of the brain are shared across organisms.

Check out the news coverage in outlets including Northwestern Now, Science Daily, Science Alert, and Phys.org.

June 2024

Image of the poster Helen presented at soft matter day.

Soft matter day @ GATech

I presented a poster "Temperature-dependent nonlinear rheology of the Voronoi cell model" at this year's Atlanta and South-East area soft matter day.

April 2024

Helen standing at a podium presenting a research talk. Part of the title slide can be seen in the background.

APS March Meeting, Minneapolis, MN

I presented my research on "Cluster tomography in percolation."

March 2024

2023

Scientific image showing a yellow line through a site percolation sample. Clusters that touch the line are colored and the rest are gray.

Paper published in Physical Review Research!

My paper "Cluster tomography in percolation" based on my postdoctoral work at Northwestern is now out in Physical Review Research. This research was undertaken with my former postdoc advisor, István Kovács, and part of this work contributed to the honors thesis of a talented undergraduate, Sam Frank, who is now a graduate student at Northeastern University.

December 2023

Entrance to Emory University. A red brick path leads up to the side of a white brick entrance gate. Flower beds line either side of the road.

I've moved to Emory University!

I'm delighted to announce that I have moved to Emory University as a Tarbutton Postdoctoral Fellow working with Prof. Daniel Sussman!

August 2023

Cityscape of Budapest with a tram in the foreground

Focused workshop on networks and their limits, Budapest, Hungary

I spent two weeks at the Rényi institute at the focused workshop on networks and their limits.

July 2023

Sigma Phi International Conference on Statistical Physics, Chania, Crete

I presented a contributed talk "Signatures of universal criticality in the cellular anatomy of the brain."

July 2023

TGS Spotlight

I was honored to featured in The Graduate School Spotlight. You can check it out here if you'd like to learn a little more about me.

July 2023

APS March Meeting, Las Vegas, NV

I presented my research on "Signatures of criticality in the physical structure of the brain."

March 2023

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