I had the privilege of spending three months at Imperial College London, from February to April 2024, thanks to the ICL-CNRS fellowship. During my stay, I initiated several collaborations, most notably with Dr Thibault Bertrand and his PhD student, Eloise Lardet. Together, we focused on the numerical analysis of an active disordered model, inspired by the fusion of active particle and spin-glass models. Over these months, we uncovered several key properties of this model, such as how self-propulsion reduces frustration, leading to a global polar phase despite the presence of anti-ferromagnetic mean couplings.
In parallel, alongside Dr Barbara Bravi, we co-supervised a Master’s student, Felix Wong, who worked on the inverse problem related to the same model. By linearising the system's stochastic dynamical equations and applying a maximum-likelihood approach, we derived analytic expressions for the model’s parameters based on time trajectories. Although this work is ongoing, we aim to apply this method to biological data in the future.
My stay at Imperial also enabled valuable interactions with researchers who share similar scientific interests. This led to a new collaboration with Dr Gunnar Pruessner on applying statistical field theory to molecular networks. Additionally, I had the chance to visit the Francis Crick Institute, where I had spent my postdoctoral years, and continue ongoing collaborations.
I would like to sincerely thank the ICL-CNRS committee and administrative staff for this exceptional opportunity. It was a refreshing and inspiring experience that I hope has set the basis to long-term collaborations.
Host: Thibault Bertrand and Barbara Bravi
