
Otger Campas
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering
Duncan & Suzanne Mellichamp Professor in Systems Biology
Contact
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Elizabeth D. Hay New Investigator Award, Society for Developmental Biology; Early CAREER Award, National Science Foundation (NSF)
Research
Our group is broadly interested in morphogenesis and self-organization of living systems, regardless of the particular organism or scale. We work to identify general principles of self-organization in living matter, with the goal of eventually understanding the fundamental differences of self-organization in inert versus living systems. We combine theory and experiments, as well as physics, biology, materials science and engineering, to obtain a global (or 'systems') understanding of the problems on which we work. Our current interests span several topics such as embryonic development, tissue growth, cell shape, and morphological variation.