Ca2+, cadherins, and contractility – integration of mechanosensing when endothelial cells move and align with fluid flow
As part of our LMP Seminar Series we are delighted to welcome our speaker:
Dr. Arnold Hayer, PhD
Associate Professor, Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology
McGill University
Talk title: "Ca2+, cadherins, and contractility – integration of mechanosensing when endothelial cells move and align with fluid flow"
Hosted by
How to join
The event will be in person, no need to register. Students and trainees must attend in person.
For faculty members who need to attend remotely, please register to receive the zoom link. Registration must be received by noon on Tuesday.
If you have any questions, please contact lmp.chairadmin@utoronto.ca for more details.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026
11 am - 12 pm
MSB 2170
Medical Sciences Building
University of Toronto
1 King’s College Circle
Toronto, ON M5S 1A8
Details are sent to the LMP community in the Friday events bulletin.
Speaker bio: Dr. Arnold Hayer, PhD
Arnold Hayer studied Chemical Engineering at the TU Munich, and Biotechnology at the École Supérieure de Biotechnologie, Strasbourg (ESBS). Thereafter, he moved to ETH Zurich, for doctoral studies under the guidance of Ari Helenius, to study assembly and disassembly of caveolae, small plasma membrane invaginations involved in membrane traffic and homeostasis. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the lab of Tobias Meyer at Stanford University. His research on mechanisms that control collective cell migration led to the discovery of cadherin fingers, asymmetric junctional features between collectively migrating endothelial cells that serve as guidance cues to mediate collective cell guidance.
Research in his lab in the Department of Biology at McGill University is centered around cell morphogenesis and cell movement across spatiotemporal scales, from subcellular self-organization to tissue formation. Using cultured human endothelial cells as a model system, the lab’s focus is on key signal transduction networks, in the context of cytoskeletal dynamics and cell-cell adhesion, and how they respond to biochemical and mechanical cues, both intracellular and extracellular. They use advanced live-cell imaging techniques enabling spatiotemporal analysis of cytoskeletal and signaling dynamics, combined with fluorescence-based reporters, microfabrication, and computational image analysis. Ultimately, the lab’s goal is to gain mechanistic understanding of how subcellular signal transduction networks control the behavior of individual cells and how signal transduction is coordinated between cells to enable complex, multicellular processes such as vascular morphogenesis.
Research in his own lab in the Department of Biology, McGill University, is focused on how neighboring cells coordinate their intracellular signaling activities during collective cell migration and more generally, how coordinated single-cell behavior can lead to emergent properties such as collective cell migration or vascular morphogenesis. His lab follows an interdisciplinary approach, using live-cell microscopy, fluorescence-based biosensors, microfabrication, and computational image analysis.
