How can we build and program biological robots?
Living things assemble themselves into structures that grow and heal, which is a kind of engineering we cannot yet match. Learning to direct it could give us entirely new materials and new ways to treat disease. Therefore, I am aim to understand and control biological self-organization. To do this, I study how individual cells perform computations and how multiple such cells collectively generate multicellular structures.
At the level of single cells, I study cellular gradient sensing. During my PhD in Daniel Lew's lab at Duke University, I combined yeast genetics, quantitative live cell imaging, and mathematical modeling to uncover how cells respond to chemical gradients. My colleagues and I mechanistically described the dynamics of a cell's polarized front, discovered that this front can perform chemotaxis up chemical gradients, and theoretically predicted mechanisms underlying chemotactic bias (Ghose & Lew, 2020, Ghose et al, 2021).
At the multicellular level, I am developing a research program to understand and control the collective behavior of immune cells. By doing so, I hope to build programmable biological robots that fight intruders like infections or tumors. I started this work in Don Ingber's lab at Harvard University (Ghose et al, 2025) and am now continuing it in Wendell Lim's lab at University of California, San Francisco.
Outside the lab, I enjoy painting, playing guitar, and riding single-wheeled things.
Publications
Ghose D, Ferrante T & Ingber D. Cytokines control the physical state of immune tissue. bioRxiv. 2025. [Link]
Ghose D, Nolen J, Guan K, Elston TC & Lew DJ. Ratiometric signaling produces robust temporal integration for accurate cellular gradient sensing. bioRxiv. 2026. [Link]
Stejskalová A, Calderon K, Collins M, Feitor JF, Ghose D, Tang S, Gutzeit O, Badey N, Gulati A, Lopez MV, Chou DB, Petrozza JC, Plebani R, Junaid A, Budnik B & Ingber DE. Human fallopian tube-on-a-chip for preclinical testing of non-hormonal contraceptives with living human sperm. bioRxiv. 2026. [Link]
Ghose D, Elston T & Lew DJ. Orientation of Cell Polarity by Chemical Gradients. Annual Review of Biophysics. 2022. [Link]
Ghose D, Jacobs K, Ramirez S, Elston T & Lew DJ. Chemotactic movement of a polarity site enables yeast cells to find their mates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2021. [Download/Link]
Clark-Cotton MR, Henderson N, Pablo M, Ghose D, Elston T & Lew DJ. Exploratory polarization facilitates mating partner selection in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 2021. [Link]
Ghose D & Lew DJ. Mechanistic insights into actin-driven polarity site movement in yeast. Molecular Biology of the Cell. 2020. (Chosen to be a Highlight and nominated for Best Paper of the Year) [Download/Cover/Link]
Henderson NT, Pablo M, Ghose D, Clark-Cotton MR, Zyla TR, Nolen J, Elston TC & Lew DJ. Ratiometric GPCR signaling enables directional sensing in yeast. PLoS biology. 2019. [Download/Link]