Physics of plants

The Physics of Plants theme is focused on borrowing ideas, methods and quantitative approaches from physics, to address hard questions related to plant biology. To fully grasp the physics underlying plant biology is a necessary step towards a fundamental understanding of plant life and towards the development of novel applications in the expanding agri-tech sector. The range of expertise in the Physics of Life Network at Imperial is wide, so the theme is by design open to a range of biologically significant questions broadly based on plant development and physiology. By design, the theme composition is continuously evolving and open to new ideas, but currently the main focus can be summarized with:

• Plant Morphogenesis and tissue self-organization (e.g. regeneration)
• Plant-environment physical interaction (e.g. mechanical stress, gravitational field, electromagnetic fields, etc)
• Bioelectricity in plant development
• Photosynthesis mechanisms and improvement
• Physiology of root-soil interaction

People

Theme lead

• Giovanni Sena

Members

• Heather Graven
• Gunnar Pruessner
• Chiu Fan Lee
• Peter Nixon
• James Murray
• Bill Rutherord
• Jasper van Thor
• Naomi Nakayama