Rate My Professor Joshua Shaevitz

The research in the Shaevitz Lab explores fundamental physical principles underlying biological processes, investigating how life emerges from collections of molecules, cells, and organisms. Key areas include bacterial cell growth, division, motility, and pattern formation, as well as the neural generation of discrete animal behaviors. The group employs precision measurements, advanced microscopy, computer vision, machine learning, and theoretical modeling. Shaevitz has been recognized with the American Physical Society Fellowship in 2019, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2009, Pew Scholarship in the Biomedical Sciences from 2009 to 2013, National Science Foundation CAREER Award from 2009 to 2014, Sloan Research Fellowship from 2008 to 2010, and Human Frontier Science Program Young Investigator Award from 2008 to 2011. Prominent publications feature "Helical insertion of peptidoglycan produces elongation and chiral ordering of the bacterial cell wall" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2012), "The bacterial actin MreB rotates, and rotation depends on cell-wall assembly" in PNAS (2011), "Direct Measurement of Cell Wall Stress Stiffening and Turgor Pressure in Live Bacterial Cells" in Physical Review Letters (2011), and recent articles in Nature Physics, PNAS, and Nature Communications (2025). Shaevitz contributes to the academic community through service on the Executive Committee of the Lewis-Sigler Institute since 2012, graduate admissions committees, and as a Visiting Scientist at the Janelia Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.