Benjamin Machta

Benjamin Machta's picture
Assistant Professor of Physics
He/him/his
YSB-C164
+1 (203) 432-3650
Research Areas: 
Biophysics; Condensed Matter Physics
Research Type: 
Theorist
Current Projects: 

Our research focuses on understanding how biological systems operate using approaches from theoretical physics.  We use statistical physics to understand the structure and function of biological membranes, which experiments have shown operate close to a demixing critical point in the Ising universality class.  They also use tools from information theory to place physical bounds on the ability of organisms to function that arise from their limited ability to measure their environment and from their limited energy budget.

 

Biographical Sketch: 

Ben Machta is an Assistant Professor of Physics and member of the Systems Biology Institute at Yale University.  Ben recieved an undergraduate degree in Physics from Brown University and a PhD from Cornell University where he used information geometry to study the emergence of simple models, and began a long-standing interest in membrane criticality.  He completed a postdoc at Princeton as a Lewis-Sigler Theory fellow before moving to Yale in 2018.

 

Research: 

Ben’s research focuses on understanding how biological systems operate using approaches from theoretical physics.  His group uses statistical physics to understand the structure and function of biological membranes, which experiments have shown operate close to a demixing critical point in the Ising universality class.  They also use tools from information theory to place physical bounds on the ability of organisms to function that arise from their limited ability to measure their environment and from their limited energy budget.

 

Education: 

Ph.D., Cornell University, 2013

Honors & Awards: 

2019 - Simons Investigator Award

Selected Publications: 

See my google scholar page for an up to date list