Noah Toyonaga

Faculty host: Manu Prakash

Affiliated with: Department of Bioengineering, School of Engineering

Noah Toyonaga is a physicist and artist. They earned their PhD in physics from Harvard University in May 2025. They are drawn to the mysteries and delights of the everyday, which they explore, and try to explain, through theory, computation, and experiment—driven by geometric intuition. Their doctoral work reflects upon the genius of nature (the fatal mechanism of viral infection), the wisdom of craft (the fecundity of origami), and the beauty of the quotidian (the complexity of wrinkles in a piece of cloth). At Stanford, Noah will study the geometry and mechanics of soft membranes decorated by seams, a geometric motif that underlies the patterns drafted by a tailor and the microscale mechanisms evolved by single-celled organisms alike.