DrGiovanni Sena

With a background in both physics and biology, I am broadly interested in physical and genetic mechanisms generating “growth and form” in multicellular systems, especially through the establishment and maintenance of spatio-temporal patterns within a field of interacting cells. I view tissue development as a process of self-organization and morphogenesis as one of its emergent properties.
I believe that plants offer many experimental advantages that make them attractive model systems to address fundamental questions on multi-cellular organization.

Besides asking basic questions at the intersection between "quantitative developmental biology" and "theoretical biology", I am also interested in applying what we learn in the lab to solve practical problems in the realm of agri-tech and crop production.

Arabidopsis thaliana is the model system of choice in my lab, and the preferred approach is a combination of genetics, quantitative imaging and mathematical modeling. For translational projects, we have adopted a wide spectrum of plant species, such as medicago, maize, rice but also tomatoes, peas and beans.