Angela Pitenis and PhD student Anthea Li are exploring whether friction can act as a guiding force in how cells migrate through complex environments.
An investment from the W. M. Keck Foundation is helping UC Santa Barbara researchers push forward with ambitious, high-impact work across science and engineering—advancing discoveries that could reshape fields ranging from materials science to climate research.
Through the foundation’s Bridge Funding Initiative, UCSB has been awarded $1.2 million to support six innovative research projects led by early- and mid-career faculty and their graduate students. The program is designed to accelerate promising ideas at critical stages, enabling researchers to sustain momentum and pursue transformative breakthroughs. At UCSB, the selected projects reflect the university’s strength in interdisciplinary collaboration and its commitment to advancing fundamental science with real-world potential.
“We are deeply grateful to the W.M. Keck Foundation for its continued partnership with UCSB and for recognizing the importance of supporting bold, early-stage research,” said Rachel Segalman, vice chancellor of research and professor of materials and chemical engineering. “Supporting our faculty and students is essential to advancing discovery and enabling them to pursue ideas that can open entirely new directions in science and engineering.”
Rethinking How Cells Move
Angela Pitenis, an associate professor of materials, and PhD student Anthea Li are exploring how physical forces, specifically frictional shear stress, can influence how cells move, introducing a fundamentally new way of understanding cell behavior.
Their project, “Mutaxis: A New Paradigm of Friction-Mediated Migration,” challenges long-standing models that explain cell movement primarily through biochemical signals. Instead, their research asks whether friction itself can act as a guiding force, shaping how cells migrate in complex environments.
"For decades, we have largely ignored the physical resistance to motion (friction) associated with cell migration,” said Pitenis. “However, cells are living materials navigating a physical world. We aim to uncover the tribological mechanisms (e.g., static and kinetic friction), that drive cell motion in confinement, such as when a cell must physically wedge itself between dense tissue layers or slip through narrow vascular gaps."
This question has far-reaching implications. If friction can direct cell movement, it could open new pathways for controlling processes such as tissue regeneration, wound healing, and even the spread of cancer. The team is particularly interested in how reduced friction may enable cancer cells to move more easily through confined spaces, offering new insight into metastasis.
"The Keck Foundation Bridge Funding is a vital catalyst for our work and has provided the resources to pursue high-risk, high-reward hypotheses at the intersection of materials science, soft matter physics, and biology," said Pitenis.
With this support, the team will leverage custom-built tribometers with integrated confocal microscopy to characterize the extent to which frictional shear stresses affect cell migration.
Their work could ultimately establish friction as a new “design parameter” for engineering materials and therapies that guide cell behavior.
Other UCSB teams selected for Keck Bridge grants include Elaheh Ahmadi and Navid Kafi in electrical and computer engineering, Brooke Gardner and Soham Chowdhury in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, Gen Li and Fan Liu in earth science, Elizabeth Wilbanks and Victoria Jones in ecology, evolution, and marine biology, and Enoch Yeung and Alec Taylor in mechanical engineering. To read descriptions of the five other projects click here.
About the W. M. Keck Foundation
The W. M. Keck Foundation was established in 1954 in Los Angeles by William Myron Keck, founder of The Superior Oil Company. One of the nation's largest philanthropic organizations, the W. M. Keck Foundation supports outstanding science, engineering and medical research. The Foundation also supports undergraduate education and maintains a program within Southern California to support arts and culture, education, health and community service projects.
