Publications by Sangwoo Kim | EPFL Graph Search

Material-like robotic collectives with spatiotemporal control of strength and shape

The vision of robotic materials—cohesive collectives of robotic units that can arrange into virtually any form with any physical properties—has long intrigued both science and fiction. Yet, this vision requires a fundamental physical challenge to be overco ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)2025

The physical roles of different posterior tissues in zebrafish axis elongation

Sangwoo Kim

Shaping embryonic tissues requires spatiotemporal changes in genetic and signaling activity as well as in tissue mechanics. Studies linking specific molecular perturbations to changes in the tissue physical state remain sparse. Here we study how specific g ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2025

Exceptionally dense and resilient critically jammed polydisperse disk packings

Sangwoo Kim

Understanding the way disordered particle packings transition between jammed (rigid) and unjammed (fluid) states is of both great practical importance and strong fundamental interest. The values of critical packing fraction (and other state variables) at t ...

2024

Proliferation-driven mechanical compression induces signalling centre formation during mammalian organ development

Sangwoo Kim, Pengfei Xu

Localized sources of morphogens, called signalling centres, play a fundamental role in coordinating tissue growth and cell fate specification during organogenesis. However, how these signalling centres are established in tissues during embryonic developmen ...

Nature Portfolio2024

A nuclear jamming transition in vertebrate organogenesis

Sangwoo Kim

Jamming of cell collectives and associated rigidity transitions have been shown to play a key role in tissue dynamics, structure and morphogenesis. Cellular jamming is controlled by cellular density and the mechanics of cell-cell contacts. However, the con ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2024