With Kevin we are trying to understand the role of space, adjacency, and topology play in determining the capacity of synthetic genetic circuits have to code for spatial information and developmental organization. Such spatial biology of genetic genetic nets can be studied from the ground up using simple genetic systems with spatial coupling in combination with spatial ecologies on-chip. Statistical mechanics and soft-matter physics offer a fertile approach to understanding the structure of these spatially-explicit cell cultures.

Kevin’s Ph.D. thesis work is co-tutored together with Fernan Federici at the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology (GMM), PUC, Chile.