Physics and mathematics of active and living matter
I am a theoretical physicist broadly working in the area of statistical physics, stochastic systems, soft matter, and theoretical biophysics. Currently, I am a (4-year) Flora Philip Fellow based at The School of Mathematics, Applied and Computational Mathematics, at the University of Edinburgh. My previous position was as an Isaac Newton Institute (INI) Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
Current questions/topics that I am thinking and researching about:
How to best steer continuous and discrete-state active matter to perform useful functions efficiently?
Mathematical and computational exploration of the stochastic geometry of active matter.
Exploring efficient and robust optimization of active matter simulations.
How to adapt ideas and techniques from equilibrium thermodynamics to better understand the physics of active matter?
Biophysics, in particular modelling assemblies of disordered proteins and biomolecular condensates that may also be out-of-equilibrium.
Current research affiliations:
Past/Other research affiliations:
Many thanks to past and present funders:
"Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things."
- Sir Isaac Newton
Latest news and information
(Aug 2025) NEW PREPRINT: Happy to see our collaboration work on “Force and geometric signatures of the creep-to-failure transition in a granular pile“ out as a preprint https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01391.
(Jul 2025) NEW PREPRINT: Nice to see our collaboration work on “Targeted disruption of phage liquid crystalline droplets abolishes antibiotic tolerance of bacterial biofilms“ out as a preprint https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.28.667140v1.
(Jul 2025) Our experimental collaborator Dr. Cacey S. Bester visits us here in Edinburgh, Cacey is based at Swarthmore College.
(Jul 2025) 1st UK Biomolecular Condensate Network Symposium [Abstract submission deadline 31st Oct 2025]: https://www.ukcondensates.co.uk/1st-uk-biomolecular-condensate-network-symposium
(Jun 2025) Luke participated in the Nonlinear and statistical physics School at the IHES, in Bures sur yvette (France).
(Jun 2025) Gave a talk and visited the Golestanian group in Goettingen (Germany).
(May 2025) Luke participated in the Leuven School: Basics of Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics. I gave a short talk on “Deriving and computing response relations for control of active matter”.
(April/May 2025) Gave a chalk talk at the ‘Higgs Hour’ talks and gave the ACM Colloquium both in Edinburgh.
(Feb 2025) Invited to talk at the Scottish Soft Matter Meeting (12th Feb).
(Jan 2025) Gave a (local) MathBio seminar at The School of Mathematics, University of Edinburgh.
(December 2024) Awarded a Wellcome Accelerator Award!
(December 2024) For 1 week, I visited the group of Prof. Dr. Sabine Klapp at TU Berlin and gave an informal seminar.
(December 2024) Abstract submission for INTERPHACE open until 8th December 2024: https://www.crick.ac.uk/whats-on/interphace-symposium-2025.
(November 2024) I gave an invited talk at the MathPhys seminar series at Imperial College London.
(November 2024) I gave an invited talk at the CMMB seminar series at the University of Nottingham.
(October 2024) I gave an invited talk at the Biocomplexity seminar series at the Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen.
(October 2024) For 2 weeks, I visited Dr. Karel Proesmans at the NBIA (Niels Bohr International Academy) in Copenhagen.
(October 2024) I became a Research Associate of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge.
