About

Margaret L. Gardel is the Horace B. Horton Professor of Physics, Molecular Engineering, and Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology at the University of Chicago. She serves as the Principal Investigator of the Gardel Lab and is the Director of the James Franck Institute, the Center for Living Systems, and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. Her research focuses on the biophysical dynamics of cellular and molecular systems, particularly in areas such as active and adaptive materials, cytoskeleton assembly and mechanics, mechanotransduction, and epithelial morphogenesis. Through her interdisciplinary appointments and leadership roles, Professor Gardel integrates physics and molecular biology to advance understanding of the mechanical and dynamic properties of living systems.

Research topics

• Biology
• Chemistry
• Cell biology
• Physics
• Biological system
• Genetics
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Biophysics
• Chemical physics
• Biochemistry
• Nanotechnology
• Optoelectronics
• Statistical physics
• Materials science

Selected publications

• One- and two-particle microrheology of soft materials based on optical-flow image analysis

  Soft Matter · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Particle-tracking microrheology probes the rheology of soft materials by accurately tracking an ensemble of embedded colloidal tracer particles. One-particle analysis, which focuses on the trajectory of individual tracers is ideal for homogeneous materials that do not interact with the particles. By contrast, the characterization of heterogeneous, micro-structured materials or those where particles interact directly with the medium requires a two-particle analysis that characterizes correlations between the trajectories of distinct particle pairs. Here, we propose an optical-flow image analysis as an alternative to the tracking-based algorithms to extract one and two-particle microrheology information from video microscopy images acquired using diverse imaging contrast modalities. This technique, termed optical-flow microrheology (OFM), represents a high-throughput, operator-free approach for the characterization of a broad range of soft materials, making microrheology accessible to a wider scientific community.

  PublisherDOI

• Learning via mechanosensitivity and activity in cytoskeletal networks.

  PubMed · 2025-04-21

  preprintOpen access

  In this work we show how a network inspired by a coarse-grained description of actomyosin cytoskeleton can learn - in a contrastive learning framework - from environmental perturbations if it is endowed with mechanosensitive proteins and motors. Our work is a proof of principle for how force-sensitive proteins and molecular motors can form the basis of a general strategy to learn in biological systems. Our work identifies a minimal biologically plausible learning mechanism and also explores its implications for commonly occuring phenomenolgy such as adaptation and homeostatis.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Learning noisy tissue dynamics across time scales

  ArXiv.org · 2025-10-21

  preprintOpen access

  Tissue dynamics play a crucial role in biological processes ranging from inflammation to morphogenesis. However, these noisy multicellular dynamics are notoriously hard to predict. Here, we introduce a biomimetic machine learning framework capable of inferring noisy multicellular dynamics directly from experimental movies. This generative model combines graph neural networks, normalizing flows and WaveNet algorithms to represent tissues as neural stochastic differential equations where cells are edges of an evolving graph. Cell interactions are encoded in a dual signaling graph capable of handling signaling cascades. The dual graph architecture of our neural networks reflects the architecture of the underlying biological tissues, substantially reducing the amount of data needed for training, compared to convolutional or fully-connected neural networks. Taking epithelial tissue experiments as a case study, we show that our model not only captures stochastic cell motion but also predicts the evolution of cell states in their division cycle. Finally, we demonstrate that our method can accurately generate the experimental dynamics of developmental systems, such as the fly wing, and cell signaling processes mediated by stochastic ERK waves, paving the way for its use as a digital twin in bioengineering and clinical contexts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tension transmission across a supracellular network drives increased tissue rigidity in the Drosophila retina

  Cell Reports · 2025-10-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Organ morphologies generated in development must be maintained in dynamic growth environments over long physical distances and timescales. How complex tissues like the Drosophila retina execute specialized cellular morphogenetic programs while maintaining their larger, tissue-scale morphology is not well understood. Here, we show that the developing retina acquires an organ scale curvature early in pupal development. Concurrently, uniform, sustained Rok-mediated actomyosin contractility organized through apical cellular adhesions in interommatidial pigment cells (IOPCs) increases junctional tension across the ommatidial network to drive a ∼5-fold increase in tissue rigidity. Induction of mosaic defects in IOPC junctional tension coupled with in silico modeling of the IOPC network revealed that tension transmission within the IOPC network bridges the cell and tissue scales, providing structural integrity to the retina without changing ommatidial geometry. We propose that tension transmission across tissue-spanning supracellular networks, by uniformly modulating epithelial rigidity, can stabilize three-dimensional organ morphology.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response for "One- and two-particle microrheology of soft materials based on optical-flow image analysis"

  2025-01-06

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Motor crosslinking augments elasticity in active nematics

  Soft Matter · 2024-01-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In active materials, uncoordinated internal stresses lead to emergent long-range flows. An understanding of how the behavior of active materials depends on mesoscopic (hydrodynamic) parameters is developing, but there remains a gap in knowledge concerning how hydrodynamic parameters depend on the properties of microscopic elements. In this work, we combine experiments and multiscale modeling to relate the structure and dynamics of active nematics composed of biopolymer filaments and molecular motors to their microscopic properties, in particular motor processivity, speed, and valency. We show that crosslinking of filaments by both motors and passive crosslinkers not only augments the contributions to nematic elasticity from excluded volume effects but dominates them. By altering motor kinetics we show that a competition between motor speed and crosslinking results in a nonmonotonic dependence of nematic flow on motor speed. By modulating passive filament crosslinking we show that energy transfer into nematic flow is in large part dictated by crosslinking. Thus motor proteins both generate activity and contribute to nematic elasticity. Our results provide new insights for rationally engineering active materials.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Machine learning interpretable models of cell mechanics from protein images

  Cell · 2024-01-01 · 55 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial: PRX Life Celebrates Its First Anniversary

  PRX Life · 2024-07-25

  editorialOpen accessSenior author

  In its inaugural year, PRX Life has focused on enhancing the experience of authors and referees working at the intersection of physics and biology. Our goal is to give this interdisciplinary community a voice. Discover what we have accomplished and see what is coming next.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Highly flexible PEG-LifeAct constructs act as tunable biomimetic actin crosslinkers

  Soft Matter · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access

  Bio-synthetic telechelics consisting of polyethylene glycol chains end-capped with the actin-binding peptide, LifeAct, are effective F-actin crosslinkers with contour length dependent control over network mechanics and structure.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Cracked actin filaments as mechanosensitive receptors

  Biophysical Journal · 2024-06-17 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant DP1OD003354

  NIH · $3.8M · 2014

• Mechanisms of Mechanotransduction by LIM Domain Proteins

  NIH · $1.4M · 2022–2026

• Active Adaptive Materials Design Inspired by Cell Mechanics

  NSF · $516k · 2022–2025

• Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers

  NSF · $21.1M · 2014–2021

• Mechanical Regulation of Cell Adhesion by Dynamic Cytoskeletal Assemblies

  NIH · $2.5M · 2015–2024

Frequent coauthors

• Patrick W. Oakes

  Loyola University Chicago

  76 shared

• Shiladitya Banerjee

  Carnegie Mellon University

  34 shared

• Jonathan Stricker

  University of Chicago

  33 shared

• Yvonne Beckham

  Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis

  32 shared

• Kimberly L. Weirich

  Clemson University

  31 shared

• Ulrich S. Schwarz

  Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies

  29 shared

• John Devany

  University of Chicago

  27 shared

• Aaron R. Dinner

  22 shared

Labs

• Gardel LabPI

Awards & honors

• Packard Fellowship
• Sloan Fellowship
• NIH Pioneer Award
• Fellow of the American Physical Society (2013)