Prize Recipient

Alison Patteson
Syracuse University

"For important contributions in characterizing the physics of living systems, including demonstrating how mechanics influences the collective behavior of bacteria and how intermediate filaments in a cell's cytoskeleton impact its mechanics, migration, and signaling."

Alison (Ali) E. Patteson is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Syracuse University. Her research combines soft matter physics and innovative engineering techniques to address open problems in cell motility. Ali is originally from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She received her B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania in 2011 and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA) in 2016, studying active and complex fluids with Prof. Paulo Arratia. Her postdoctoral research was with Prof. Paul Janmey at UPenn, where she worked on the vimentin cytoskeleton and confined cell motility. Ali Patteson joined Syracuse University in 2019, where she leads the Focus Group Mechanics of Development and Disease in the BioInspired Institute. Alison is a member of the American Physical Society and serves as a Member-at-Large in the APS topical group DBIO. She has won numerous awards, including the Sloan Research Fellowship, RCSA Cottrell Scholar Award, NSF CAREER award, and the APS Dissertation Award in Statistical and Non-linear Physics.