BIO: 

Prof. Sonia Contera works on physics at the interface of biology, nanotechnology, and information processing. She is an expert in atomic force microscopy of biological systems and has a special interest in the role of mechanics in biology.  

Her interest in matter at the nanometer scale led her from a PhD at Osaka University (Japan) on the physics of nanostructures, to biology. Her multidisciplinary journey is a quest to interrogate how matter entangles itself with its environment, storing information in time and space, to create (and sometimes to compute) complex structures (from the nanometer scale up) that are able to adapt, learn, reproduce and evolve to become “alive”. Her main interest is understanding the profound physical meaning of “biological shape”, so she studies the physics of “biological growth and shape” in diverse systems such as plants, neural networks and tumors.

She is a believer in “learning by making”, collaborating, creating technology, engaging with the public. By doing so she finds interesting problems, but more fundamentally she strives to weave responsibility into her science, so her work can contribute to progress in a meaningful, ethical, and fairer way. 

ABSTRACT: 

How and why do we design and build artificial structures and even machines at the nanoscale using DNA, proteins, and other biological molecules or construct hybrid bio-inorganic robots using the building principles of biology? I will explore how nanotechnology (the capacity to visualize and manipulate matter at the nanoscale) is revolutionizing medicine in ways that will have profound effects on our health. From nanomachines inspired by biology that can train the immune system to fight cancer, to nano-antibiotics that can eliminate resistant bacteria and vaccines to end the COVID pandemic, to the engineering of tissues and organs for research, drug discovery, and transplantation. More profoundly nanotech facilitates the study of biology within the framework of physics, thereby creating interfaces with other fields (e.g. bioinspired quantum devices and computer science). This will potentially change not only the future of materials, engineering and AI, but also the way we think about life itself, and dare to think how we pose questions such as “what is intuition?” from a physics lab.