<html aria-label="message body"><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Dear Soft Matter & Complex Systems Colleagues and Friends,</font></div><div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">On Friday 6 March 2026 at 9:30 AM at the UW Faculty of Physics (Pasteura 5, Warsaw; room 1.40) we are hosting a seminar, during which </font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><font face="HelveticaNeue" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><b>Jonasz Słomka</b></font><font face="HelveticaNeue" style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><b> </b>(</font><font face="HelveticaNeue">FUW)</font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">will give a talk</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><div><h2 style="margin: 6px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><span style="font-size: 12px;">How encounters at the microscale prime microbial interactions</span></font></h2><h2 style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 6px 0px 12px; padding: 0px;"><b style="caret-color: rgb(68, 68, 68);"><font face="HelveticaNeue" style="font-size: 12px;">Abstract</font></b></h2></div><div><font face="HelveticaNeue">Microbial interactions often critically depend on the rate of physical cell-cell or cell-resourceencounters. In a liquid environment, many prominent examples include encounters amongphytoplankton in the ocean that lead to the formation of marine snow, the formation of living aggregates by cyanobacteria, bacterial chemotaxis towards leaky phytoplankton, and horizontal gene transfer between bacteria. Microscale encounters are nearly always quantified as encounters between inanimate spheres, borrowing from the physics of gases, coagulating colloids, and rain formation. However, these classical approaches often fail to account for important traits of microorganisms, such as cell elongation, motility, or gradient sensing. Even more importantly, experimental assays typically do not control cell-cell encounters. In my talk, I will outline how more realistic models of encounters at the microscale can contribute to our understanding of fundamental ecological processes controlled by microbes, from active aggregation through chemotaxis to gene exchanges. I will close by presenting our recent experimental evidence that encounters driven by fluid shear strongly control the rates of horizontal gene transfer between bacteria.</font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><br></div></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue; margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">We warmly welcome everyone to attend the talk and the Soft Matter Coffee Break after the seminar, held in room 2.63 (2nd floor).</font></div></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><font face="HelveticaNeue"><br></font></div><div style="font-family: HelveticaNeue;"><div dir="auto" style="overflow-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;"><div style="margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Maria Ekiel-Jeżewska</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Maciej Lisicki</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Piotr Szymczak</font></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-width: normal; line-height: normal;"><font face="HelveticaNeue">Panagiotis Theodorakis</font></div></div></div>
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