Our overarching goal is to discover the physical principles underlying spatial and temporal organization of proteins and nucleic acids within cells and to understand how mis-regulation of protein phase separation and aggregation give rise to neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington’s disease and ALS. Conceptually, we are interested in the physics of living systems that connects information encoded in molecular matter via spontaneous and driven processes to understand how information encoding gives rise to mesoscale control that leads to a living cell. Specific foci include the form and functions of intrinsically disordered proteins, biomolecular phase transitions, and the principles of molecular recognition. Our discoveries are driven by development, adaptation, and deployment of theoretical, computational, and experimental tools from the fields of polymer physics, equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical physics, biochemistry, and molecular engineering. We wear two hats - those of biophysicists and of engineers. And as engineers, we leverage fundamental insights to pave the way for finding cures for neurodegenerative disorders and pursue applications in materials science and synthetic biology.