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 received 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.
Research Website
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