Wenhui Tang

Wenhui Tang is a PhD candidate whose research seeks to provide new understandings of cell behaviors in biological systems from physical and mechanical perspectives. With the support of her second MathWorks Fellowship, Wenhui will pursue a project focused on understanding the mechanics of development and growth of human lung alveolar systems in 3-D. Utilizing images collected by a confocal microscope, and MATLAB tools for computation, modeling, and data processing, she will study collective cell migration and cellular forces that change during the growth of alveolospheres to ascertain cell shape, circularity, area, perimeter, aspect ratio, and volume for hundreds to tens of thousands of cells at once. Her work has already revealed that cells have the ability to collectively sense substrate curvature and regulate their multicellular fluidity in 3-D multicellular systems. Currently, she is digging further into mechanical properties, coupled with cell migration characteristics, to understand more complex physiological and pathological processes. By broadening our understanding of the physical rules that govern complex multicellular systems, Wenhui’s work could support a broad spectrum of research areas in biology, engineering, and human health.