Da Wei
魏达
An experimentalist in biophysics,
who has a lot of fun watching microbes move.
Contact: didas.wd[AT]hotmail.com
Research summary
I am an experimental biophysicist. My PhD research focused on biological ciliary flow and green algae, before which I worked on graphene nano-electronics. I enjoy developing new experimental techniques and collaborating with friends from other fields. This makes half of my passion for doing research.
The other half lies in my research topic. How does motility emerge across scales? From motion of motor proteins (10^-8 m), to flagellar rotation and ciliary bending (10^-5 m), and from collective swimming (10^-4 m) to the macroscopic ciliary flow (10^-2 m). There emerges a ladder of order, and nothing is more fascinating.
Education
2015-2020
PhD in biophysics
Delft University of Technology (TU Delft)
2011-2014
MSc. in nano-electronics
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)
2007-2011
BSc. in physics
University of Science and Technology of China (USTC)
Selected publications
Journal of Fluid Mechanics, 915, A70, 2021; 1st author, equal contribution.
Biophysical Journal, 118, 2914, 2020; 1st author, equal contribution.
Physics Review Letters, 122: 124502, 2019; 1st author.
Nano Letters, 15(10): 6620–6625, 2015; 1st author, equal contribution.
Physical Review Letters, 115: 126804, 2015; 2nd author.
Applied Physics Letters, 105(7): 073510, 2014; 2nd author.
Scientific reports, 3: 3175, 2013; 1st author.
Research projects
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How is bacterial turbulence different from the classical ones in energy dissipation.
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How do individual geometry and hydrodynamics affect the collective?
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Characterizing the spatiotemporal dynamics of the ciliary flow, fundamental hydrodynamics, experimental measurement, and numerical simulations.
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Studying the hydrodynamics of C. reinhardtii mastigonemes, a flagellar ultrastructure, AKA fibrous flagellar hair.
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Studying flagellar synchronization and flagellar coupling to external flows.
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Design and fabricate graphene quantum dot hybrid devices, that are connected to each other by a superconducting resonator.
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Use the device to characterize the electronic charge state in graphene quantum dots.
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Design and fabricate graphene quantum dots.
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Characterize the electronic controllability by different gating designs.
These are the projects with which I earned my degrees.
For details and other fun projects, see in Project & Publications