This three-year NSF award supports fundamental research in mechanical property determination of living cells. Researchers from the Colleges of Engineering and Medicine at the University of Cincinnati (UC) have assembled an interdisciplinary team to examine indentation of living cells via atomic force microscopy (AFM) for the purpose of determining cell mechanical properties. This program directly addresses many of the limitations of current analysis approaches for cell mechanical property determination through a combination of detailed AFM experiments and comprehensive analytical and numerical modeling. The intellectual merit of this work is that it will advance the ability to extract mechanical properties of living cells from AFM indentation data. This information will allow pursuit of the long-term research goal of understanding the link between cell mechanical deformations and cell behavior. Broader impact is achieved by integrating these improved modeling approaches and the AFM experiments into a dual-level, interdisciplinary Cellular Mechanics course.
