David Rutkowski

My research focuses on the computational simulation of biological systems. One main area of my work focuses on investigating how the protein actin (and related proteins like talin) can generate forces within the cell allowing the cell to crawl. This is important not only at the fundamental physics level, but also for understanding errors with this process as happens with the metastasis of cancer cells. I also am interested in understanding how cell membrane associated proteins are influenced by membrane flows. These membrane flows may provide a way for cells to pattern their surfaces to direct diverse processes such as growth and signaling. Additionally, I have worked on improving computational methods to analyze experimental images including writing a code to extract the diffusion and unbinding rates of proteins from experimental FRAP (fluorescence recovery after photobleaching) images and speeding up code to trace and track biopolymers from experimental images over time.