B.A., Chemistry and Pre-Medical Studies, Bard College at Simon’s Rock M.S., Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Washington

The Sgro Laboratory is focused on elucidating how cells work together and make group decisions to perform complex behaviors such as assembling into a tissue, forming a biofilm, healing a wound, or developing into different cell types. Our understanding of these behaviors has been limited because of the technological challenges presented by connecting microscale signaling events occurring on a timescale of seconds inside single cells to macroscale events occurring over hours and even days across the whole cellular population. We address these challenges through creating and applying new methods to observe and control these behaviors. These new technologies enable us to develop a predictive understanding of the rules biological systems implement to organize collectives, permitting us to engineer these group-wide behaviors for our benefit.