Robert Austin

About

Robert Austin is a Professor of Physics at Princeton University, affiliated with the Center for the Physics of Biological Function, an NSF Physics Frontier Center. His role involves research and academic responsibilities within the physics community, focusing on the intersection of physics and biological systems. Further details about his specific research focus, background, and key contributions are not provided on the page.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Engineering
• Data science
• Cancer research
• Nanotechnology
• Internal medicine
• Biochemical engineering
• Mathematics
• Biology

Selected publications

• Updating the Definition of Cancer

  Molecular Cancer Research · 2023 · 561 citations

  Most definitions of cancer broadly conform to the current NCI definition: "Cancer is a disease in which some of the body's cells grow uncontrollably and spread to other parts of the body." These definitions tend to describe what cancer "looks like" or "does" but do not describe what cancer "is" or "has become." While reflecting past insights, current definitions have not kept pace with the understanding that the cancer cell is itself transformed and evolving. We propose a revised definition of c…

  DOI

• Deterministic Lateral Displacement: Challenges and Perspectives

  ACS Nano · 2020 · 193 citations

  The advent of microfluidics in the 1990s promised a revolution in multiple industries from healthcare to chemical processing. Deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) is a continuous-flow microfluidic particle separation method discovered in 2004 that has been applied successfully and widely to the separation of blood cells, yeast, spores, bacteria, viruses, DNA, droplets, and more. Deterministic lateral displacement is conceptually simple and can deliver consistent performance over a wide range…

  DOI

• Emergent Field-Driven Robot Swarm States

  Physical Review Letters · 2021 · 86 citations

  We present an ecology-inspired form of active matter consisting of a robot swarm. Each robot moves over a planar dynamic resource environment represented by a large light-emitting diode array in search of maximum light intensity; the robots deplete (dim) locally by their presence the local light intensity and seek maximum light intensity. Their movement is directed along the steepest local light intensity gradient; we call this emergent symmetry breaking motion "field drive." We show there emerg…

  DOI

• Exploration of drug resistance mechanisms in triple negative breast cancer cells using a microfluidic device and patient tissues

  eLife · 2023-10-03 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Chemoresistance is a major cause of treatment failure in many cancers. However, the life cycle of cancer cells as they respond to and survive environmental and therapeutic stress is understudied. In this study, we utilized a microfluidic device to induce the development of doxorubicin-resistant (DOXR) cells from triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells within 11 days by generating gradients of DOX and medium. In vivo chemoresistant xenograft models, an unbiased genome-wide transcriptome analys…

  PublisherDOI

• Phosphorescence-based <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" altimg="si1.gif"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msub> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">O</mml:mi> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:msub> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> sensing reveals size-dependent survival and motility of metastatic prostate cancer cells in self-generated hypoxia

  iScience · 2025-04-03 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  consumption shifted cell distributions to larger sizes, whereas prolonged hypoxia induced apoptosis, producing cell populations of smaller areas post-hypoxia. Such resilience to hypoxia was absent for noncancerous fibroblasts. Our findings suggest that larger PC3 cells have enhanced metabolic fitness under hypoxia, identifying these cells as potential targets of cancer therapy.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Evolution Game Theory Modeling of Tumor Dormancy

  NSF · $300k · 2017–2020

• The Physics of Evolution and Adaptation in a Nanofabricated World

  NSF · $360k · 2008–2011

• NIH Grant R03RR008032

  NIH · $33k · 1994

Frequent coauthors

• James C. Sturm

  Princeton University

  88 shared

• Kenneth J. Pienta

  55 shared

• Edward C. Cox

  52 shared

• Jonas O. Tegenfeldt

  Lund University

  52 shared

• Robert Riehn

  North Carolina State University

  40 shared

• Nicholas C. Darnton

  Amherst College

  38 shared

• Sarah R. Amend

  Johns Hopkins University

  36 shared

• Thomas Duke

  33 shared

Education

• PhD, Physics

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  1975

• MS, Physics

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  1970

• BA, Physics

  Hope College

  1968

Similar researchers at Princeton University

• Eric F. Wieschaush-109
• David W. Tankh-85
• Ned S. Wingreenh-84