Faculty Description

• ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
• Ph. D., Technical University Dresden, Germany, 2007
• http://schoetzlab.ucsd.edu
• RESEARCH: Biophysics

• Office Location:  UH 7214 or UH 7218
• Office Phone:  TBD
• Email:  emschoetz@physics.ucsd.edu
• Administrative Contact:  Nancy Steinmetz

• I am interested in the role of physical principles for living system. Currently, we are working in three major areas: Biomechanics, asexual reproduction, and behavior&memory. We use techniques such as micro- and macrorheology, in vivo imaging, and force traction microscopy, and combine them with molecular biology methods to investigate how the structure and function of biological samples influences developmental processes, regeneration, and asexual reproduction in planarians. The latter is itself a major area of interest in my lab as it can be studied from the molecular level to the population level, allowing us to combine stem cell biology with tissue mechanics, statistical physics, evolution and aging. To this end, we developed a unique experimental system in which we track thousands of individual worms over the course of several years to study their reproduction dynamics. Every time a planarian reproduces asexually by ripping itself apart, the tail piece needs to regenerate a new head and central nervous system. We study nervous system regeneration and maintenance in the context of learning and memory, on the cellular as well as the organism level, and combine in vivo imaging with electrophysiology and automated tracking of planarian behavior.

• Eva-Maria S. Collins Selected as Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow
• It is my great pleasure to announce that Professor Eva-Maria Schoetz Collins has been selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow. This is an extraordinarily competitive award, involving nominations of the very best young scientists from the United States and Canada.

  The Sloan Research Fellowships were established in 1955 to provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars, often in their first appointments to university faculties, who were endeavoring to set up laboratories and establish their independent research projects with little or no outside support. Financial assistance at this crucial point, even in modest amounts, often pays handsome dividends later to society.

  On behalf of the Department, I extend to Eva-Maria our congratulations.

  Dimitri N. Basov
  Chair, Department of Physics
  

• - "Size matters! Birth size and a size-independent stochastic term determine asexual reproduction dynamics in freshwater planarians," M.A.Thomas, S. Quinodoz and E.-M. Schoetz, J. Stat. Phys., DOI: 10.1007/s10955-012-0514-x (2012)


• - "SAPling: A Scan-Add-Print barcoding database system to label and track asexual organisms," M.A.Thomas, S. Quinodoz and E.-M. Schoetz, JEB 214, 3518-3523 (2011)


• - "The more the merrier? - Entropy and statistics of asexual reproduction in freshwater planarians," S. Quinodoz, M.A. Thomas, J. Dunkel, and E.-M. Schoetz, J. Stat. Phys. 142, 1324-1336 (2011)


• - "Quantitative characterization of planarian wildtype behavior as a platform for screening locomotion phenotypes," J.A. Talbot, and E.-M. Schoetz, JEB 214, 1063-7 (2011)


• - "Memory and obesity affect the population dynamics of asexual freshwater planarians,"J. Dunkel, J.A. Talbot, and E.-M. Schoetz, Phys. Biol. 8, 026003 (2011)


• - "Coaction of intercellular adhesion and cortical tension specifies tissue surface tension," M.L. Manning, R.A. Foty, M.S. Steinberg, and E.-M. Schoetz, Proc Natl Acad Sci 107(28):12517-12522 (2010)


• - "Quantitative differences in tissue surface tension influence zebrafish germlayer positioning," E.-M. Schoetz, R.D. Burdine, F. Julicher, M.S. Steinberg, C.-P. Heisenberg, and R.A. Foty, HFSP Journal .2 (1), 1-56 (2008)