Professor Kirsty Wan

I am Professor of Cellular and Biophysical Dynamics at the Living Systems Institute (LSI) and the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. I am also Director of Global Engagement and co-lead of the Physics of Life theme at the LSI and Senior Academic Lead for the Maths for Health and Life Sciences group at the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. I have been at the University of Exeter since late 2017, when I joined as a new group leader at the then newly established LSI. I obtained my BA, MMath, and PhD degrees in mathematics from the University of Cambridge. From 2014 to 2017 I was elected Thomas Nevile Junior Research Fellow at Magdalene College. 

My lab explores how cells and small organisms control and orchestrate complex behaviours. We integrate experimental, theoretical, and computational approaches to explore fundamental biological questions such as how aneural single-celled organisms actuate their motility appendages for swimming. We are particularly interested in understanding the origins and diversification of cilia, also known as eukaryotic flagella, which are evolutionarily conserved across phyla. We pioneer novel biophysical approaches to understanding ciliary form, function, and coordination in diverse species.

I currently hold an ERC Starting Grant to study how single-celled lifeforms control their movement and the origins of basal cognition in living systems. Research in the lab is funded by a number of sources, including ERC, BBSRC, HFSP and ARIA.  I recently completed an Academy of Medical Sciences Springboard Award for a project on the biomechanics of motile cilia. I was a Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science and AI (2020-2022).

External Roles: I serve on the Leadership Committee of the UK Cilia Network, the Wellcome Trust Advisory Panel for Data Sciences, Tools, and Technology Discovery Advisory Group, and am a member of the BBSRC Pool of Experts. I also routinely review for leading journals (e.g. Elife, PNAS, Nature Physics, Physical Review) and for national and international research councils (e.g. HFSP, BBSRC, EPSRC, ANR, DFG).

Office: T03.09, Living Systems Institute.

Twitter: @micromotility

Youtube channel.

See my personal webpage for more information and the latest preprints/research from my group.

Informal enquiries welcome about open positions.
(Currently recruiting PhD students in 2025-26: possible projects include microbial biophysics, timeseries analysis of organismal behaviour, microhydrodynamics, noisy synchronization of active filaments)

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Keywords: mathematical biology, dynamical systems, biological physics, quantitative biology, image processing, pattern recognition, cell biology, microscopy, phenomenological modelling, low Reynolds number fluid dynamics.

My Erdös number = 4.
Wan (4) - Goldstein (3) - Moffat (2) - Lorentz (1) - Erdös (0)