Asja Radja

Asja Radja received her bachelors degrees in physics and biochemistry from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2012, and her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. She then moved to Harvard University where she was a Schmidt Science Fellow working under Professor L Mahadevan in the Applied Math Department for one year. She then became an independent NSF-Simons Quantitative Biology Fellow also at Harvard University from 2020-2022.

Asja’s research elucidates the “rules of living patterns” that lead to a variety of shapes and add to our understanding of how life builds itself. Life is organized at many length scales ranging from the molecular to the macro, and there is an incredible amount of complexity in the morphologies at these various levels of organization. Historically, biologists have looked to the genetic code for instructions to reveal the secrets of self-assembly. However, once DNA is transcribed and translated to proteins and subsequent other macromolecules, there is no known “code” that dictates how these products interact. To discern the principles of this self-organization, we must identify the physical phenomena that govern the soft, disordered, and often far-from-equilibrium living world.