Rate My Professor Kirsty Wan

Professor Wan's research investigates the biophysical principles of motile behaviours in microorganisms, emphasizing the dynamics, coordination, and control of motile cilia and flagella at the interface of physics, mathematics, and biology. Her group employs high-speed quantitative imaging, genetics, cell biology, theoretical and computational modelling, and robophysics to study self-propulsion gaits, metachronal waves, bioelectric locomotion control, and the origins of eukaryotic excitability in protists and invertebrate larvae. She has secured major competitive funding, including an ERC Starting Grant in 2019 for sensory-motor pathways in unicellular organisms, a £500,000 ARIA grant in 2023 for embodied cognition in single-celled organisms, and leadership of the nearly £5 million Wellcome Discovery Award-funded UNICIL project in 2025, uniting six European research groups to decode multiciliary functions. Key publications include "Flagellar synchronization through direct hydrodynamic interactions" (eLife, 2014), "Coordinated beating of algal flagella is mediated by basal coupling" (PNAS, 2016), and "Origins of eukaryotic excitability" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2021). Her work, with substantial citations, advances microscale motility understanding and informs ciliopathy research.