Komal Bhattacharyya received her combined bachelor’s and master’s degree in physics in 2018 from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Kolkata. For her master’s, she worked on understanding oscillatory dynamics observed during Drosophila development, using theoretical modeling and non-linear dynamical analysis, under Dr. Rumi De. She also worked on a non-linear dynamical understanding of locomotion patterns generated by self-organized robots as a DAAD scholar at Goethe University Frankfurt for a summer intern in 2017 and on statistical physics of fiber bundle models under Prof. Dr. S. S. Manna of the Satyanandra Nath Bose National Center for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, as a summer intern in 2015. In 2018, Komal joined our group at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization as a Ph.D. student working on the slime mold Physarum from a theoretical perspective.