Researchers: Guy Blanchard, Nilankur Dutta (Université Grenoble Alpes), Jocelyn Étienne (Université Grenoble Alpes), Lukas F. Lang, Carola-Bibiane Schönlieb

The main goal of this project is to understand cellular processes in the developing embryo of Drosophila. We aim to identify the mechanisms and driving forces of tissue formation, tissue regrowth after damage and the collective motion of cells. Mathematical models of, for instance, cell membranes typically include unknown physical parameters (Hannezo et al, 2015). A well-established way to infer these from measurements is to probe tissue mechanics with the help of laser ablations in order to measure e.g. recoil velocities (Zulueta-Coarasa & Fernandez-Gonzalez, 2015). In this project we aim to utilise image analysis and inverse problems to estimate these parameters automatically and reliably from confocal microscopy images of live Drosophila embryos.