Prof. Sara Merino Aceituno is a Professor at the Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna, leading research in kinetic theory and its applications to biology, medicine, and social sciences. She holds roles as Vice-Dean of the Faculty and Head of the Institute of Mathematics. Her work bridges mathematical models with experimental data, focusing on emergent phenomena in collective dynamics, opinion formation, and cell behavior. She teaches advanced courses on kinetic theory, biomathematics, and mathematical strategies for learning. Her contributions include modeling cell delamination, nematic alignment, and swarm dynamics through PDEs and probabilistic methods. Collaborations with experimentalists drive her interdisciplinary research. She actively engages in education, advising, and public outreach, including a video series explaining mathematical patterns in nature. Her research emphasizes understanding macroscopic patterns arising from microscopic interactions in complex systems. Education: Holds a PhD in Mathematics, with expertise in kinetic theory and applied partial differential equations. Teaching and leadership roles reflect her commitment to academic excellence and student support. Her work integrates experimental and computational models to study clonal dynamics in tissues and mechanical constraints in epithelial layers. She has authored over 20 papers on topics ranging from active matter to opinion formation networks, contributing to both theoretical advancements and practical applications in biology and social sciences. Research focuses on deriving hydrodynamic and continuum models from particle systems, analyzing stability and bifurcations in collective behavior. Grants and collaborations include the Vienna Biocenter PhD Program and experimental groups in cell biology. Her lab explores how environmental factors influence particle swarms and how mechanical forces shape cell cycles in pseudostratified epithelia.








