Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Karen Alim

- Phone
- +49 89 289-12192
- Room
- EG.036
-
k.alim@tum.de
frauenbeauftragte@ph.tum.de (Equal Opportunity Officer of the Physics Department) - Links
-
Homepage
Page in TUMonline
- Group
- Theory of Biological Networks
- Job Titles
- Department Council Member
- Equal Opportunity Officer of the Physics Department
- Professorship on Theory of Biological Networks
Courses and Dates
Title and Module Assignment | |||
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Art | SWS | Lecturer(s) | Dates |
From Biofluids to Bionic eLearning course Assigned to modules: |
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VO | 2 | Alim, K. |
Mon, 14:00–16:00, CPA EG.006A |
Current Developments in Physics of Biological Networks Assigned to modules: |
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PS | 2 | Alim, K. |
Wed, 10:00–12:00, virtuell |
Physics & Life Assigned to modules: |
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HS | 2 | Alim, K. |
singular or moved dates |
Seminar to From Biofluids to Bionic Assigned to modules: |
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HS | 2 | Alim, K. | |
Mentoring in the Bachelor’s Program Physics Assigned to modules: |
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KO | 0.2 | Alim, K. | dates in groups |
Revision Course to Physics & Life Assigned to modules: |
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RE | 2 |
Responsible/Coordination: Alim, K. |
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Revision Course to Seminar to From Biofluids to Bionic Assigned to modules: |
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RE | 2 |
Responsible/Coordination: Alim, K. |
Offered Bachelor’s or Master’s Theses Topics
- Active response by adaptation of mechanical properties?
The complex behavior of the giant cell Physarum polycephalum finds its origin in the versatile transformation of liquid cytoplasm to gel-like actin-myosin meshwork making up the tube walls and vice versa. These active mechanics allow the organism to recycle its’ gel-like tubes at its rear and move it in its fluid form to the front, where it grows. Also, responding to stimuli like food, touch, or light, a change in cytoplasm viscosity seems to initiate the response. Yet, what are the mechanical properties of the liquid cytoplasm, and how much do they change upon stimulation? Do the mechanical properties of the cytoplasm change with the location in the cell? The measure of the mechanical properties of cells is challenging, but one can probe their visco-elasticity by tracking injected micron-sized beads - a technique called microrheology. You will measure the mechanical properties of cytoplasm extracts and grown Physarum, and quantify how they change upon stimulation by passive and active microrheology. Task 1: Establish cytoplasm extraction following previous work in the literature. Task 2: Perform passive microrheology on cytoplasmic droplets without and with stimulation (light, food, drugs) and analyze your data quantitatively. Task 3: Establish active microrheology to extract cytoplasm viscosity in different parts of Physarum’s network.
- suitable as
- Bachelor’s Thesis Physics
- Supervisor: Karen Alim
- Mapping network theory to network function
- Networks exist as our social network, the world wide web, traffic routes but also as flow networks making up the vasculature of animals, plants, fungi and slime moulds. While a lot of measures have been developed to describe networks in general it is not clear how these measures are predicting network function via network architecture. You will quantify physical networks of the slime mould and numerically generated model networks with network theoretic measures. Mapping to slime mould behaviour and model network flow and transport function will allow you to identify predictive network theoretic measures. You will learn network theory, Matlab. Prerequisites: statistical physics. Task 1 Collect network theoretic measures from the literature and Matlab packages Task 2 Apply network theoretic measures on slime mould and model data and map their property onto the network architecture Task 3 Correlate link by link network theoretic measure and flow/transport in the link under inspection to identify measures of predictive power.
- suitable as
- Bachelor’s Thesis Physics
- Supervisor: Karen Alim
Publications
- Changing Flows Balance Nutrient Absorption and Bacterial Growth along the Gut
- Agnese Codutti (author), Jonas Cremer (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2022-09-23
- journal article
- Physical Review Letters
- DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.138101
- Memory Formation in Adaptive Networks
- Komal Bhattacharyya (author), David Zwicker (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2022-07-06
- journal article
- Physical Review Letters
- DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.129.028101
- Changing flows balance nutrient absorption and bacterial growth along the gut
- Agnese Codutti (author), Jonas Cremer (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2022-02-18
- other
- DOI: 10.1101/2022.02.16.480685
- Network architecture determines vein fate during spontaneous reorganization, with a time delay
- Sophie Marbach (author), Noah Ziethen (author), Leonie Bastin (author), Felix K. Bäuerle (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2021-12-30
- other
- DOI: 10.1101/2021.12.29.474405
- Nuclei are mobile processors enabling specialization in a gigantic single-celled syncytium
- Tobias Gerber (author), Cristina Loureiro (author), Nico Schramma (author), Siyu Chen (author), Akanksha Jain (author), Anne Weber (author), Anne Weigert (author), Malgorzata Santel (author), Karen Alim (author), Barbara Treutlein (author), J. Gray Camp (author)
- 2021-04-30
- other
- DOI: 10.1101/2021.04.29.441915
- Encoding memory in tube diameter hierarchy of living flow network
- Mirna Kramar (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2021-03-09
- journal article
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2007815118
- Tissue-wide integration of mechanical cues promotes effective auxin patterning
- João R. D. Ramos (author), Alexis Maizel (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2021-02
- journal article
- The European Physical Journal Plus
- DOI: 10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01204-6
- Emergence of behavior in a self-organized living matter network
- Philipp Fleig (author), Mirna Kramar (author), Michael Wilczek (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2020-09-08
- other
- DOI: 10.1101/2020.09.06.285080
- Living System Adapts Harmonics of Peristaltic Wave for Cost-Efficient Optimization of Pumping Performance
- Felix K. Bäuerle (author), Stefan Karpitschka (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2020-03-05
- journal article
- Physical Review Letters
- DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.098102
- Robust Increase in Supply by Vessel Dilation in Globally Coupled Microvasculature
- Felix J. Meigel (author), Peter Cha (author), Michael P. Brenner (author), Karen Alim (author)
- 2019-11-26
- journal article
- Physical Review Letters
- DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.228103
further publications (total of 36).
See ORCID profile of Karen Alim as well.