Affiliation: Weizmann Institute of Science, Department of Physics of Complex Systems

Dr. Shahaf Armon received her PhD from the department of Bioengineering at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel in 2014 under the supervision of Dr. Eran Sharon, where she studied geometrical and mechanical mechanisms for shaping via growth, both in plant tissues (leaves, seed pods) and synthetic analogues (rubber models, responsive hydrogels). In her following post doctoral studies at Dr. Manu Prakash’s lab at Stanford University, she turned to epithelium biomechanics, in the basal animal T. Adhaerens. Through her experimental work of imaging ultrafast contractions in the live epithelium (“in toto” imaging of the entire live moving animal at cell scale), she started thinking of tissue stability and dynamics, in development, physiology, disease, and regeneration. Currently at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, Shahaf’s main focus is emerged mechanics in tissues as active solids. Specifically, she’s interested in how a cellular response to mechanical stress upscales to non-trivial dynamics, mechanical properties, and physiological abilities at the tissue scale.