Professor Alexandre Kabla

Alexandre is one of our Official Fellows, a Tutor and Director of Studies in Engineering. At the University he is Professor of Mechanobiology.

Biography

Alexandre was born near Paris, France and studied for a BS and MRes in Physics and Computer Sciences at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. There he also became a professeur agrégé, having taken the agrégation in Physical Sciences and Chemistry. On graduation, he moved to study for his PhD at the Institut Charles Sadron (Strasbourg) and the Collège de France, Université Paris Diderot. He focused on the Physics of Soft Condensed Matter, specialising in foams and granular matter. After his PhD, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Applied Mathematics Department of the Australian National University (Canberra), under Prof Tim Senden. He then took up a postdoctoral post in Harvard's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences for two years, in the group of Professor L. Mahadevan, before moving to Cambridge as a lecturer (Assistant Professor), and becoming a Fellow of Emmanuel in 2007.

Research

Alexandre’s current research is in the field of mechanobiology, combining experimental design, data analysis, and modelling to investigate the role of mechanical forces and physical constraints in the dynamics of large cell populations. His research focuses on understanding how subcellular processes lead to macroscopically coordinated behaviours, such as cell migration and rearrangement patterns observed during embryo development, cancer metastasis, and wound healing. His work aims to characterize the mechanical forces and physical constraints governing these processes.

His research also explores the rheology (deformation and flow) of soft disordered materials, such as fibrous networks, foams, granular materials, and biomaterials. This work investigates the mechanical properties of these complex systems. Alexandre's research combines experimental techniques, data analysis, and theoretical modelling to unravel the physical principles governing the mechanics of living systems at multiple scales, from subcellular processes to tissue–level behaviours.