Ulrich Schwarz (physicist)

Ulrich Schwarz (approx. 2017)

Ulrich Sebastian Schwarz (born March 3, 1966 in Stuttgart ) is a German theoretical physicist who teaches statistical physics and biophysics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg .

life and work

Ulrich Schwarz completed his undergraduate studies in physics at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and then studied the history of science and physics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, USA for a year as part of a Fulbright scholarship . In 1994 he finished his physics studies at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich . He wrote his diploma thesis with Gerhard Gompper and Herbert Wagner on the subject of Ginzburg-Landau models in the physics of soft matter. He then did his doctorate in 1998 under Gerhard Gompper and Reinhard Lipowsky at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam on the physics and phase behavior of liquid membranes, in particular the physics of cubic phases. From 1998 to 2000, Schwarz worked on a Minerva grant as a postdoctoral fellow with Samuel Safran at the Weizmann Institute for Sciences in Israel. It was here that he began his research in the field of biophysics, particularly on the role of forces in cell adhesion. From 2000 to 2005 he headed a junior research group on the theory of cell adhesion at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, which was funded from 2001 by the Emmy Noether Program of the German Research Foundation. In 2005 he moved with his junior research group to the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, where he was additionally supported by the Center for Modeling and Simulation in the Biosciences (BIOMS). In 2008, Schwarz was appointed Professor of Theoretical Biophysics (W3) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology . In 2009 he was appointed professor for theoretical physics (W3) at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg . He is also a co-opted member of the Faculty of Biosciences and a member of the BioQuant Center for Quantitative Biology.

His areas of activity include statistical physics , non-linear and stochastic dynamics, continuum mechanics, soft matter theory, theoretical biophysics and quantitative biology, with a particular focus on the measurement and theoretical understanding of cell forces. As an international expert in traction force microscopy , he made an early contribution to the development of mechanobiology . He is also concerned with how cell forces are generated in cells by molecular motors and polymerisation processes, how they are transferred to their contacts with the environment through the cytoskeleton of the cells, and what consequences this has for cellular decision-making processes. His group also works on the physics of self-assembly , e.g. B. of viruses or structures of the cytoskeleton.

Ulrich Schwarz is the author of more than 100 scientific publications, mainly in the field of biophysics. He is a member of the editorial board of the journals BMC Biophysics, New Journal of Physics and Physical Review E. From 2009 to 2015 he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the Physics Center Bad Honnef and from 2011 to 2013 spokesman for the Association for Biological Physics of the German Physical Society (DPG ). 2014–2018 he is an elected member of the Senate of Heidelberg University and in 2011/12 and 2017/18 he was director of the Institute for Theoretical Physics.

Awards

• 2011 Distinguished Referee Award of the American Physical Society
• 2017 teaching award from the Faculty of Astronomy and Physics

Publications (selection)

• with G. Gompper: A systematic approach to bicontinuous cubic phases in ternary amphiphilic systems. In: Phys. Rev. E. 59, 1999, pp. 5528-5541.
• with IB Bischofs: Cell organization in soft media due to active mechanosensing. In: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. UNITED STATES. 100, 2003, pp. 9274-9279.
• with T. Erdmann: Stability of adhesion clusters under constant force. In: Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 2004, p. 108102.
• with B. Sabass, ML Gardel and C. Waterman: High resolution traction force microscopy based on experimental and computational advances. In: Biophys. J. 94, 2008, pp. 207-220.
• with J. Weichsel: Two competing orientation patterns explain experimentally observed anomalies in growing actin networks. In: Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. UNITED STATES. 107, 2010, pp. 6304-6309.
• with Samuel A. Safran: Physics of adherent cells. In: Rev. Mod. Phys. 85, Aug 2013, pp. 1327-1381.
• with Philipp J. Albert: Dynamics of cell ensembles on adhesive micropatterns: bridging the gap between single cell spreading and collective cell migration. In: PLoS Comput Biol. 12 (4), 2016, p. E1004863.
• with Patrick W. Oakes, Elizabeth Wagner, Christoph A. Brand, Dimitri Probst, Marco Linke, Michael Glotzer and Margaret L. Gardel: Optogenetic control of RhoA reveals zyxin-mediated elasticity of stress fibers. In: Nature Communications. 8, 2017, p. 15817.

Web links

• Website at the University of Heidelberg
• Publications at Google Scholar