Michael Murrell

Michael Murrell is an Associate Professor in the Biomedical Engineering and Physics Departments, and the Systems Biology Institute at the Yale West Campus. Murrell received his B.S. from Johns Hopkins University in Biomedical Engineering and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Bioengineering working for Paul Matsudaira and Roger Kamm. He then pursued his postdoctoral studies jointly with Margaret Gardel at the University of Chicago, and Cecile Sykes at the Institut Curie in Paris, France.

Murrell's interests are in understanding the mechanical principles that drive major cellular life processes through the design and engineering of novel biomimetic systems. To this end, he develops simplified and tractable experimental models of the mechanical machinery within the cell with the goal of reproducing complex cellular behavior, such as cell division and cell migration. Murrell then combines these ‘bottom-up’ experimental models with concepts from soft matter physics to gain a fundamental understanding of the influence of mechanics on cell and tissue behavior. In parallel, he hopes to identify new design principles from biology which can be used to create novel technologies.