International Women's Day (March 8) is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women's equality. International Women's Day (IWD) has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people. This year the theme is 'Embrace Equity' to create a fair and equal world for all.

To recognise IWD, WMS we will be hosting an event to showcase a number of speakers from WMS, NHS and NHS Charities to deliver a short presentation or update which feed into the sub strands and main theme of IWD, followed by a Q & A.

We would like to welcome as many people as possible to this event, but please do Register for the event here as there will be refreshments afterwards.

Abstract: Active matter refers to a collection of individuals, from animal groups to micro-organisms to cytoskeletal filaments, that extract energy from their surroundings at a single-particle level to generate motion and forces. Active matter displays a wide range of emergent behaviors, such as coordinated migration, self-organization, phase transitions, and self-assembly. Here we show that Plasmodium sporozoites, a crescent-shaped form of malaria parasites, provide a unique model system of active matter that combines the aspects of self-propulsion, curved shape, and mechanical flexibility into one system. We investigate the motion of sporozoites in collectives extracted from the salivary glands of mosquitoes, where they form large rotating vortices. We find that single sporozoites within the vortices are sorted according to their curvatures and speeds. Further, the vortices undergo oscillatory breathing in their shape. We explain these intriguing observations using agent-based simulations where each agent is represented by an active curved polymer that mimics the behavior of a motile sporozoite. In summary, we establish malaria parasites as a new active matter system and provide novel insight into the role of shape and mechanics in collective behavior.