This Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) award supports research to apply novel biomechanics and engineering methods to determine how mechanical forces and cellular energy constraints work together to guide the motion of cells. Cells often move as groups rather than as single cells. This process is important in tissue formation, wound repair, and disease progression, such as cancer invasion and tissue fibrosis. Yet it remains difficult to determine how cells coordinate movement in three-dimensional environments that more closely resemble living tissues. In these settings, cells must both transmit forces to one another and use energy to sustain motion. Current methods do not allow these processes to be studied well within realistic tissue environments. The knowledge and tools developed through this research project will provide a foundation for future studies of tissue growth, repair, and diseases such as cancer. The project will also contribute to broader national interests in biotechnology by advancing methods to study coordinated cell behavior in realistic tissue environments and help advance the national health. In addition, it will connect research with education through hands-on learning, outreach activities, and broad sharing of experimental and analytical tools for students and researchers. In this way, the project will help establish a sustained research and training effort in biomechanics and mechanobiology. This CAREER award supports research that focuses on understanding how intercellular forces and cellular energy constraints regulate collective migration in three-dimensional environments. The research will use a recently developed method for mapping intercellular stresses in three-dimensional cell collectives, together with bioenergetic measurements, engineered tissue models, and deep learning-based image analysis, to determine how force patterns and energy constraints shape coordinated movements. The objectives are to determine how int