Ice formation is a stochastic process that can be modulated by controlling cooling rate and cryoprotectant concentration, creating an engineering-biology trade-off.

Ice formation is a stochastic process. So if ice just formed unilaterally in any given material past a certain point of temperature, like, you know, just like go from zero to 1, it's like 100% ice, like that might be kind of hard to think carefully about technically, but ice sort of forms through a process of random nucleation and then extension. And this is cool because you can modulate the sort of nucleation, the rate of nucleation and extension to then modulate the probability of ice formation. And because it's probabilistic, if you can do that well enough and you can sort of spend minimal time in the temperature range where ice can nucleate, then that gives you a shot at sort of preventing a lot of ice formation. ... Water expands when it forms ice. That's just hard for your tissue to take without substantial damage. ... The cool thing is that there's sort of a temperature below which ice formation stops happening. So basically, if you can traverse, let's say, you know, going below 0 degrees or less, through to around minus 130, and you can get below that without ice formation, then you're good.

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