News

A big congratulations to Grace for landing a faculty position at Wesleyan
Jan. 23, 2024

We are so proud of Grace McKenzie-Smith for landing an Assistant Professorship at Wesleyan University. A great institution to carry out her fascinating work on animal behavior.

Josh to serve as Chair of the APS Division of Biological Physics
March 1, 2023

Josh is excited but a bit intimidated to take over the reigns for DBIO over the next year. This amazing group of scientists produces continues to amaze with what can be gleamed from the phenomena of life. See you at the March Meeting!

Congrats to Endao, Courtney, and Matthias on starting their faculty jobs
June 1, 2022

The lab is excited (and admittedly a little sad) that three of our amazing postdocs are off to start their independent labs. We are so excited to see all the great science that they will create!

Aspen Winter Conference on The Dynamics of Social Interactions
Aug. 12, 2021

Josh is co-organizing a winter conference on Social Interactions at the Aspen Center for Physics with Srividya Iyer-Biswas and Orit Peleg. Check out the details here: https://shaevitzlab.princeton.edu/socialinteractions2022

Congrats to Ben Bratton who is off to start his lab at Vanderbilt!
July 15, 2021

A big congratulations to the amazing Ben Bratton who is off to start a position as an Assistant Professor at Vanderbilt University. Best of luck as you start your lab and we can't wait to see the exciting science start rolling out!

Congrats to Talmo Pereira, the newest Salk Fellow!
June 2, 2021

Congrats to Talmo who will be moving in the fall to start as a Salk Fellow in beautiful San Diego!

Diana wins the Taylor Fellowship!
Sept. 17, 2020

Diana has been awarded the Joseph H. Taylor Graduate Student Fellowship from the Princeton Physics Department. Congrats Diana!!

Welcome Scott and Aaron!
May 22, 2020

The Shaevitz Lab welcomes QCB first years Scott Wolf and Aaron Bourque who have decided to join the lab for their PhDs!

Guide to giving online physics lectures with Zoom
March 14, 2020

We are all doing are best to cope with the precautionary measures in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Here is Josh's setup for remote teaching: iPad Zoom Teaching Setup. Be safe everyone.

Courtney named a Damon Runyon Fellow!
Jan. 31, 2020

Courtney Ellison, a fantastic postdoc with the Shaevitz and Gitai groups, was just named a Damon Runyon Fellow of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Check out the…

Welcome Silke!
Sept. 1, 2019

Silke Bergeler has joined the lab as a postdoc fresh from a PhD with Erwin Frey in Munich. Welcome Silke!

Cassidy receives an NSF Graduate Fellowship
April 5, 2018

Way to go Cassidy!

Katherine Copenhagen joins the lab as a new postdoc
Nov. 1, 2017

Welcome Katie! She’ll be working on the mechanism of pattern formation in Myxococcus xanthus.

Jason's off to grad school
Aug. 12, 2017

After four years plus an extra summer in the Shaevitz Lab, scientist extraordiare Jason Manley is off to Rockefeller for grad school. Good luck and come back to visit!

Welcome Diana and Anirudh
June 1, 2017

Diana S. Valverde Mendez and Anirudh Krishnan join the lab. Welcome!

Traction Force Microscopy in Bacteria
May 23, 2017

Our paper using Traction Force Microscopy on moving bacterial cells (Myxococcus xanthus) published in PNAS. The first time TFM has been applied to something as small (and cool!) as bacteria. Check it out here.

Jeff's paper on automated neuron tracking published
May 18, 2017

Jeff's paper with the Leifer Lab on automated neuron tracking in moving worms is out in PLoS Computational Biology. Check it out here.

Ugne's paper on social behaviors is out
Feb. 16, 2017

Ugne's paper on quantifying the behavior of two socially interacting individuals published in Physical Biology. Check it out here.

"The Science of Mythbusters" Video
Jan. 23, 2017

Josh's course "The Science of Mythbusters" featured in a video on the Princeton homepage! Check it out here

Daniel graduates!
Dec. 14, 2016

Congratulations to newly-minted Dr. Daniel Choi who successfully defined his PhD thesis today! Thesis title "The Study of Complex Behavioral Changes with Age in Drosophila melanogaster Using a Quantitative Framework for Behavioral Description"

Welcome fall and welcome Cassidy!
Sept. 30, 2016

Welcome fall and welcome QCB rotation student Cassidy Yang! Gordon's paper will be published in PNAS on Tuesday Oct 4, and Ugne's new paper on fly courtship has been posted to the arXiv:1609.09345.

New paper on behavioral stereotypy
May 13, 2016

Gordon's paper on behavioral hierarchy posted on the ArXiv. Check it out here: arXiv:605.03626

Welcome Brian
March 7, 2016

Brian Silver joins the lab as a rotation student from Molecular Biology. She'll be looking at the effect of different mutations on fruiting body formation in Myxococcus xanthus.

Josh, Sabine, and Haw awarded a Schmidt award!
Feb. 22, 2016

Josh, Sabine Petry (MOL), and Haw Yang (CHM) were awarded a Schmidt Fund transformative technology award to build a new kind of 3D imaging and optical manipulation microscope. Check out the press release!

Congrats Mochi and Sagar
Jan. 16, 2016

Mochi and Sagar both pass their QCB general exams. Congrats!!!

News from the Past

December 28, 2015

Our paper on whole brain imaging in freely moving worms, a great collaboration with Andy Leifer's group, is out in PNAS online!

November 10, 2015

Eugenie Martineau joins the lab for a year as a visiting PhD student from the CNRS in Marseille. Bienvenue!

October 15, 2015

Matthias Koch joins as a postdoc. Welcome Matthias!

May 10, 2015

Another year and so much progress. Gordon and Shashi are off to faculty jobs. Nick and Jeffrey defend their PhD theses next week. Daniel and Milos are graduating and off to PhD programs in the fall. Congrats to all!

January 21, 2015

Ugne passes her general exam. Congrats!!!!

July 25, 2014

Gordon's paper on stereotypy in fruit fly behavior accepted to Royal Society Interface. Congrats Gordon!!!

July 14, 2014

Three papers accepted in the last two weeks! Teuta's paper on growth in osmotic media in Biophys J, Oleg's paper on modeling development in Biophys J, and Nick and Gabe's paper on de-novo cell shape in Mol Micro.

July 1, 2014

Ashley passes her general exam. Congrats Ashley!

January 23, 2014

Guannan passes the Physics prelim exam. Congrats Guannan!

January 20, 2014

Two papers accepted in one week! Jeffrey and Nick's paper, in collaboration with the Gitai and Huang labs, accepted at PNAS. Yi's paper on super-resolution imaging accepted at PLoS One.

December 10, 2013

Shashi and Fabian's work on Myxococcus sporulation published in PLoS Biology.

September 4, 2013

How to Swim in Molasses: Josh's work highlighted in Scientific American.

August 9, 2013

New lab picture. Check it out on the People page.

July 1, 2013

Josh promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure!

June 24, 2013

Shashi's paper in PNAS highlighted by the University. Read about it here.

May 14, 2013

Mingzhai's image from the Princeton Art of Science Competition makes the news! NBC NewsNewScientist Picture of the DayGizmodo "Bacteria Never Looked So Beautiful".

March 11-24, 2013

Akeisha Belgrave, from Charles Wolgemuth's group at U Arizona, visits to learn the Myxo ropes. We look forward to having Akeisha join the group as a postdoc in the fall.

January 15-18, 2013

Nick Gavish, from Dan Goldman's group at Georgia Tech, visited us to take behavioral data on fire ants. Super cool and we only got bitten once.

January 3, 2013

Teuta Pilizota starts her new position as a group leader and Chancellors Fellow in the Institute of Cell Biology at the University of Edinburgh. Good luck T.

December 12, 2012

Nick passes his generals exam. Go Nick!

September 1, 2012

Good luck to Mingzhai who is starting a job at Ohio State today!

August 16, 2012

Daniel passes his general's exam, congrats!

August 10, 2012

What a successful summer. Great undergrads working in the lab and new positions landed for Mingzhai (Ohio State), Teuta (University of Edinburgh), and Yi (University of Washinton). Congrats to all!

June 5, 2012

Alexia and Stephen graduate and are off to graduate school. Good luck and congrats!

April 15, 2012

Teuta's paper on osmoregulation published in PLoS one.

December 31, 2011

Steven and Leon's paper on cell wall rotation and chiral peptidoglycan ordering accepted at PNAS.

December 1, 2011

Congratulations to Steven, the winner of the 2011 APS Award for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Biological Physics!!!

September 20, 2011

Sabattical visitor Zhaomin Yang (Virginia Tech) will be with us for the fall semester to think about biophysical studies of Myxococcus S-motility. Welcome Zhaomin!

September 6, 2011

Yi Deng and Mingzhai Sun's paper on cell wall stress stiffening accepted in PRL! Read the preprint here [Arxiv Preprint].

August 1, 2011

Shaevitz lab receives NIH grant to study ground-based behaviors in flies.

June 1, 2011

Grad students David Borenstein and Nikolay Ouzounov join the lab.

Image removed.

May 31, 2011

Siyuan walks in graduation. Fashionable black robes in 87F heat!

May 2, 2011

Congrats to newly-minted Dr. Siyuan Wang who successfully defended his thesis!

April 1, 2011

Mingzhai's paper on motor transport and motility in gliding bacteria accepted for publication in PNAS!

January 10, 2011

Fabian and Patrick join the lab, welcome!

November 5, 2010

Josh awarded the PECASE award from the White House! WH Press release here.

July 19, 2010

We have started an open-source github repository to host our data analysis software. Information can be found here.

June 25, 2010

I've encouraged the lab to start blogging in order to increase the dissemination of our research. Click here for a link to our blog pages.

May 3, 2010

Steven, Hugo and Peter's paper titled "An actin-like cytoskeleton contributes to cell mechanics in bacteria" published in PNAS

March 19, 2010

Steven, Hugo and Peter's paper titled "An actin-like cytoskeleton contributes to cell mechanics in bacteria" accepted for publication in PNAS

March 7, 2010

Josh's paper with Arigovinda, McGowan, Sedat and Agard titled "A Parallel Product-Convolution approach for representing the depth-varying Point Spread Function in 3D widefield microscopy based on principal component analysis" published in Optics Express

February 20-24, 2010

Mingzhai Sun and Teuta Pilizota present at the Biophysical Society annual meeting

October 20, 2009

Yi Deng passes prethesis exam and enters into PhD candidacy

June 16, 2009

Josh named a Pew Scholar