My research is in the area of experimental biophysics and is tightly connected to other areas in physics such as non-linear dynamics, soft condensed-matter and statistical mechanics. In recent years, our research was focused on the dynamics of cell populations. A biological cell is a complex system composed of numerous molecular building blocks that collectively exhibit a considerable degree of order. Our research in the last decade sheds light on this fundamental issue: how the intracellular molecular complexity self-organizes into stable cell states. More recently, we have started also to study morphogenesis, the emergence of well-defined patterns of functional tissues during development of an animal. This is a fascinating open front in the physics of complex systems that is tightly connected to our insights gained by studying population dynamics.