All reproducing multicellular animals sculpt their body plans from a single fertilized egg. While they achieve incredible diversity in form and function they must all use the same  building blocks deployed in context-dependent ways to produce their species-specific shapes. At the heart of this process is the interaction of cell fate specification driven by gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and biomolecular and biophysical networks that respond to the cellular environment and produce subcellular level forces. This multifaceted approach is coordinated through the cooperative integration of cellular behavior during critical morphogenetic stages of embryonic development.

I am interested in addressing these broad areas of developmental systems biology:
1. What are the physical advantages cells gain by acting as collectives rather than individuals and why do they prefer to move and behave as collectives during morphogenesis?
2. What topological information exists in the physical embryo that can trigger the onset of collective cell behavior at the right place and time?
3. How do GRNs interact with force-producing networks (actomyosin machinery) to pattern the behavior of embryonic tissues during development?

To answer these question I use the embryos of the basal marine chordate Ciona robusta, a model organism that allows me to work at the level of individual cells, tissues, or even whole embryos. To learn more about the use of Ciona robusta please see this blog post for the ASCB.