Sunday, June 7, 2026
16:00 – 19:00
Registration/Information
17:00 – 17:15
Welcome and Opening Remarks
Alex Persat, EPFL, Switzerland
Session I: Mechanics of Bacterial Collectives
Alex Persat, EPFL, Switzerland, Chair
17:15 – 17:45
Jing Yan, Yale University, USA
Single-Cell Imaging of Microbial Communities Across Different Spatial and Temporal Scales
17:45 – 18:00
Vivek Thacker, Heidelberg University, Germany *
Mechanobiology in Tuberculosis: How the Emergent Mechanical Resilience of Cords Influences Infection and Antibiotic Therapy
18:00 – 18:30
Fan Jin, Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, China
Mechanical Compression Activates Camp Signaling in Pseudomonas Aeruginosa
18:30 – 18:15
Laure Le Blanc, EPFL, Switzerland *
Bacteria Tune Collective Navigation by Mechanosensing Collisions
18:15 – 19:00
Flash Poster Talks
19:00 – 20:30
Dinner
20:30 – 22:00
Poster Session I
Monday, June 8, 2026
8:30 – 17:00
Registration/Information
Session II: Mechanics in Host-Microbe Interactions
Effie Bastounis, University of Tübingen, Germany, Chair
9:00 – 9:30
Rebecca Lamason, MIT, USA
Breaking and Entering: How Rickettsia Forces Its Way Across Cellular Barriers
9:30 – 10:00
Teuta Pilizota, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Mechanical Properties of Escherichia Coli Envelope, and Efforts to Observe These in Infection-Relevant, Host-Like Environments
10:00 – 10:15
Erva Keskin, University of Tübingen, Germany *
Shear Priming Decreases Endothelial Cells' Susceptibility to Listeria Monocytogenes Infection, Likely Due to a Decrease in Macropinocytosis Activity
10:15 – 10:45
Coffee Break
10:45 – 11:15
Carolina Tropini, University of British Columbia, Canada
Mechanobiological Consequences of Bowel Prep: Weakened Barriers and Pathogen Translocation
11:15 – 11:30
Faith Fore, King's College London, United Kingdom *
Airway Epithelia Clear Rhinovirus by Extruding Infected Cells at the Cost of Viral Dissemination
11:30 – 11:45
Megan Chong, University of California, Berkeley, USA *
Probing the Contribution of Actin Network Architecture and Cortical Mechanics in Bacterial-Induced Host Cell Fusion
11:45 – 12:15
Effie Bastounis, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany
Bacterially-Infected Macrophages Promote Biomechanical Alterations in Endothelial Cell Monolayers for Transmigration
12:15 – 14:00
Lunch
Session III: Mechanobiology of Motility
Daria Bonazzi, Institut Pasteur, France, Chair
14:00 – 14:30
Navish Wadhwa, Arizona State University, USA
Experimental Evolution Reveals Distinct Flagellar Strategies for Enhanced Motility in Complex Environments
14:30 – 15:00
Gerard Wong, University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Title Pending
15:00 – 15:15
Silvio Bianchi, CNR Nanotec, Italy *
Torque Transmission Through the Hook and Its Role in Bundling in E. coli
15:15 – 15:30
Balint Kiss, Semmelweis University, Hungary *
Flexible Motion of T7 Bacteriophage Tail Fibers Suggest a Dynamic Viral Infection Mechanism
15:30 – 16:00
Flash Poster Talks
16:00 – 17:00
Networking and One-on-One Discussion
17:00 – 19:00
Reception and Gathering
19:00 – 20:30
Dinner
20:30 – 22:00
Poster Session II
Tuesday, June 9, 2026
8:30 – 12:00
Registration/Information
Session IV: Bacterial Adhesion and Force Sensing
Alex Persat, EPFL, Switzerland, Chair
9:00 – 9:30
Joe Sanfilippo, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
Bacterial Stress Responses and Surface Adhesion in Shear Flow
9:30 – 10:00
Ashley Nord, Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), France
Probing Spatiotemporal Electrochemical Dynamics on Single Bacterial Cells
10:00 – 10:30
Coffee Break
10:30 – 10:45
Sergei Sukharev, University of Maryland, USA *
Local Forces in Bacterial Environmental Adaptation
10:45 – 11:00
Rafael Bernardi, Auburn University, USA *
Mechanical Stability Drives Adhesion and Virulence Evolution in Staphylococcus Aureus
11:00 – 11:30
Khalid Salaita, Emory University, USA
DNA Force Sensors Reveal the Role of Mechanical Forces in the Adaptive Immune Response
11:30 – 12:00
Panel Discussion: Hopes and Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research
12:00 – 14:00
Lunch
12:15 – 14:00
Excursion
19:00 – 20:30
Dinner
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
8:30 – 17:00
Registration/Information
Session V: Mechanobiology of Bacterial Cell Growth and of the Envelope
Daria Bonazzi, Institut Pasteur, France, Chair
9:00 – 9:30
Morgan Delarue, Laboratory for Analysis and Architecture of Systems (LAAS), France
Confined Growth Induces Robust Yeast-To-Hyphal Transition in Candida Albicans
9:30 – 10:00
Bart Hoogenboom, University College London, United Kingdom
Mechanical Forces as a Tool to Decipher Bacterial Resistance and Death
10:00 – 10:30
Coffee Break
10:30 – 11:00
Enrique Rojas, New York University, USA
Physical Factors Underlying Rod-Shaped Morphogenesis
11:00 – 11:15
Andre Körnig, Bruker Nano, Germany *
Correlative AFM-Confocal Mechanotyping of the E.coli Envelope
11:15 – 14:00
Lunch
Session VI: Theory and Computation in Mechanomicrobiology
Effie Bastounis, University of Tübingen, Germany, Chair
14:00 – 14:30
Yilin Wu, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Emergent Mechanics in Bacteria Communities
14:30 – 15:00
Vasily Zaburdaev, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany
Mechanobiology of Bacterial Colonies and Biofilms
15:00 – 15:30
Joshua Shaevitz, Princeton University, USA
Collective Behavior and Active Phase Transitions in Motile Bacterial Populations
15:30 – 15:45
Sandrasegaram Gnanakaran, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA *
Mechanism of Viral Protein-Mediated Membrane Fusion
15:45 – 16:00
Maté Biro, Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Australia *
Mechanobiology of Cytotoxic Lymphocyte Movements and Interactions
16:00 – 16:15
Maria Jose Gómez Benito, University of Zaragoza, Spain *
A Hybrid Model of Cell Monolayers: Mapping the Mechanobiology of Infection
16:15 – 17:30
Discussion, Closing Remarks and Biophysical Journal Poster Awards
17:30 – 18:30
Networking and One-on-One Discussion
19:00 – 20:30
Dinner
* Contributed talks selected from among submitted abstracts