Daniel S. Seara
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Pronouns: he/him/his
Contact
Building & Room:
EIB 160
Address:
942 W Taylor St, Chicago, IL 60607
Office Phone:
Email:
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About
Research Interests: What are the mechanical properties of living systems viewed as materials? This differs from understanding typical materials due to the non-equilibrium, distributed nature of living material’s microscopic constituents. Furthermore, the interactions and behaviors of the building blocks of living materials are inherently time-dependent due to both internal dynamics and responses to external cues. Therefore, we require a fundamental rethinking of the microscopic origins of time-varying activity and their impacts on macroscopic material properties. By combining analytically tractable models with data-driven discovery, I seek a unifying framework to understand the impacts of decision-making and information processing, broadly “intelligence,” on the mechanical properties of living systems.
Selected Publications
Sociohydrodynamics: data-driven modeling of social behavior. DSS, Jonathan Colen, Michel Fruchart, Yael Avni, David Martin, Vincenzo Vitelli. PNAS (2025)
Energy partitioning in the cell cortex. Sheng Chen, DSS, Ani Michaud, Songeun Kim, Willam Bement, Michael P. Murrell. Nat. Phys. (2024)
Non-reciprocal interactions spatially propagate fluctuations in a 2D Ising model. DSS, Akash Piya, A. Pasha Tabatabai . J. Stat. Mech. (2023)
The non-reciprocal Ising model Yael Avni, Michel Fruchart, David Martin, DSS, Vincenzo Vitelli. PRL (2025)
The transition to collective motion in nonreciprocal active matter: coarse graining agent-based models into fluctuating hydrodynamics. David Martin, DSS, Yael Avni, Michel Fruchart, Vincenzo Vitelli. PRX (2025)
Irreversibility in dynamical phases and transitions. DSS, Benjamin B. Machta, Michael P. Murrell. Nat. Comms. (2021)
Education
Ph.D., Physics.
Yale University, 2021
B.A., Individualized Study
New York University, 2014