Research interests: The role of geometry, topology and morphology in membranes, cells and tissues
I am currently an EMBL-Australia Group Leader at UNSW, Sydney. Previously, I was a Simons fellow at NCBS (a 4-year independent early-career fellowship), and before that a postdoc with Prof. Matthew Turner at the University of Warwick, and with Dr. Marc Barthelemy and Dr. Lenka Zdeborova at the Institut de Physique Theorique (IPhT) part of the CEA in Saclay, just outside of Paris. Before that, I did my Ph.D at the University of Manchester with Prof. Alan McKane, and worked in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) at both Citigroup and Barclays Capital.
Using the tools of soft-condensed matter and stochastic processes, I am currently interested in the role of geometry and topology in a range of systems; from membranes and organelles to cells and tissues. Examples include: the role of curvature-induced shear in membranes, and its effect on protein diffusion; Gating mechanisms of mechano-sensitive protein channels; morphology arising from dynamical re-modeling of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton; Coarse-grained models of epithelial sheets, and their role in morphogenesis.
More details can be found from my personal web pages and from my Google Scholar profile.
Publications :-
∗ R. G. Morris and M. S. Turner, “Mobility measurements probe conformational changes
in membrane proteins due to tension” Phys. Rev. Lett., 115 198101 (2015)
∗ R. G. Morris and T. Rogers, “Growth-induced breaking and un-breaking of ergodicity
in fully-connected spin systems”, J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 47 342003 (2014).
∗ R. G. Morris, “Relaxation and curvature-induced molecular flows within multicom-
ponent membranes”, Phys. Rev. E 89 (6), 062704 (2014).
* F. Caltagirone, S. Franz, R. G. Morris and L. Zdeborova, “Dynamics and termination cost of spatially coupled mean-field models”, Phys. Rev. E 89 (1), 012102 (2014).
∗ R. G. Morris and M. Barthelemy, “Interdependent networks: the fragility of control”,
Sci. Rep. 3, (2013).
∗ R. G. Morris and M. Barthelemy, “Transport on coupled spatial networks”, Phys.
Rev. Lett. 109 (12), 128703 (2012).
∗ R. G. Morris and A. J. Mckane, “Stability of growing vesicles”, Phys. Rev. E 83 (6),
061151 (2011).
∗ R. G. Morris, D. Fanelli and A. J. Mckane, “Dynamical description of vesicle growth
and shape change”, Phys. Rev. E 82 (3), 031125 (2010).
Books:
∗ R. G. Morris and M. Barthelemy, (2014) Spatial effects: transport on interdependent
networks, In: G. D’Agostino and A. Scala eds. Networks of networks: the last frontier
of complexity, Springer, New York, 145-161.