Joshua Shaevitz (born 1977) is an American biophysicist and Professor of Physics at the Lewis-Sigler Institute at
Princeton University in
Princeton, NJ.[1] He is known for his work in single-molecule biophysics, bacterial growth and motility, and animal behavior.[2]
Shaevitz's work focuses on precision measurements in a variety of biological systems, focusing on topics related to cell shape in bacteria, active matter and pattern formation in groups of moving cells, and the quantification of animal behavior.
His group pioneered the use of 3D live-cell imaging to study the shape of bacteria during growth. In a series of papers, Shaevitz and colleagues unraveled how a cell-wall insertion mechanism with helical coordination can produce cells with the correct shape in both rod and helical cells.[9][10][11][12] His group also studies bacterial cell mechanics, including bending rigidity,[13] turgor pressure and cell wall stiffness,[14] and pressure regulation.[15][16]
Shaevitz also has worked on the mechanisms of gliding motility and collective behavior in the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. This work includes measurement of the
mechanochemistry of individual gliding motors inside live bacteria[17][18] and the connection between active matter phase transitions and evolutionarily advantageous fruiting body formation.[19][20]
A third thread to Shaevitz's research involves the quantification of animal behavior using supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms. Shaevitz and Princeton Neuroscience professor
Mala Murthy published an automated system (LEAP) for measuring animal pose from large movie data sets.[21] This has recently been extended to multi-animal data in a package called
SLEAP.[22] His work has extended to understanding the dynamics of animal behavior through unsupervised clustering methods in collaboration with Princeton Physics colleague
William Bialek and others.[23][24][25][26]
Elected Fellow of the
American Physical Society for "fundamental contributions to the understanding of the mechanics and dynamics of biological systems, from single molecules to cell collectives to behaving animals, through the development of new techniques for precision measurement", 2019[29]
Joshua Shaevitz (born 1977) is an American biophysicist and Professor of Physics at the Lewis-Sigler Institute at
Princeton University in
Princeton, NJ.[1] He is known for his work in single-molecule biophysics, bacterial growth and motility, and animal behavior.[2]
Shaevitz's work focuses on precision measurements in a variety of biological systems, focusing on topics related to cell shape in bacteria, active matter and pattern formation in groups of moving cells, and the quantification of animal behavior.
His group pioneered the use of 3D live-cell imaging to study the shape of bacteria during growth. In a series of papers, Shaevitz and colleagues unraveled how a cell-wall insertion mechanism with helical coordination can produce cells with the correct shape in both rod and helical cells.[9][10][11][12] His group also studies bacterial cell mechanics, including bending rigidity,[13] turgor pressure and cell wall stiffness,[14] and pressure regulation.[15][16]
Shaevitz also has worked on the mechanisms of gliding motility and collective behavior in the social bacterium Myxococcus xanthus. This work includes measurement of the
mechanochemistry of individual gliding motors inside live bacteria[17][18] and the connection between active matter phase transitions and evolutionarily advantageous fruiting body formation.[19][20]
A third thread to Shaevitz's research involves the quantification of animal behavior using supervised and unsupervised machine learning algorithms. Shaevitz and Princeton Neuroscience professor
Mala Murthy published an automated system (LEAP) for measuring animal pose from large movie data sets.[21] This has recently been extended to multi-animal data in a package called
SLEAP.[22] His work has extended to understanding the dynamics of animal behavior through unsupervised clustering methods in collaboration with Princeton Physics colleague
William Bialek and others.[23][24][25][26]
Elected Fellow of the
American Physical Society for "fundamental contributions to the understanding of the mechanics and dynamics of biological systems, from single molecules to cell collectives to behaving animals, through the development of new techniques for precision measurement", 2019[29]