My research explores how microbial communities organize, function, and evolve through theinterplay of biological regulation and physical interactions. Bacterial biofilms—communities of cells embedded in a self-produced extracellular matrix—play important roles in health, industry,and the environment. They provide a powerful setting for understanding how molecular processes and individual cell behaviors give rise to emergent properties of communities. My group combines microbiology, quantitative imaging, computational modeling, and concepts from physics and ecology.
We ask how cells regulate their behavior in biofilms, how their interactions build communities with distinct architectures and mechanical properties, and how these communities respond to and reshape their environments. Our interests span natural, engineered, and host-associated contexts.
My previous work spans phenotypic heterogeneity in biofilms, microbial social evolution, andbiofilm pattern formation and mechanics, as well as topological structures in liquid crystals and magnets. These experiences shape my interest in the relationships among structure, dynamics, and function in complex living systems.
I earned my Ph.D. in Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder and subsequently pursued postdoctoral research at Yale University. I will join the University of Michigan as an Assistant Professor of Biophysics in January 2027.
Research interests
- Cellular regulation and phenotypic heterogeneity
- Biofilm organization, pattern formation, and mechanics
- Microbial cooperation, competition, and evolution
- Interactions between microbial communities and their environments
- Development of quantitative tools for studying microbial communities
Education and training
- Postdoctoral research, Yale University. Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow
- Ph.D. in Physics, University of Colorado Boulder
- B.S. and M.S. in Physics, National Taiwan University
Selected publications
- Tai, J.-S. B. et al. “Spontaneous phenotypic sorting and bet-hedging in growing biofilmsrevealed by single-cell imaging.” bioRxiv (2025). Preprint.
- Tai, J.-S. B. et al. “Social evolution of shared biofilm matrix components.” Proceedingsof the National Academy of Sciences 119, e2123469119 (2022).
- Tai, J.-S. B. and Smalyukh, I. I. “Three-dimensional crystals of adaptive knots.” Science365, 1449 (2019).
- Tai, J.-S. B. and Smalyukh, I. I. “Static Hopf solitons and knotted emergent fields insolid-state noncentrosymmetric magnetic nanostructures.” Physical Review Letters 121,187201 (2018).
