Lab is sponsor
A professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will describe how interdisciplinary approaches can further our understanding of human disease at a talk this evening in Santa Fe.
Arup Chakraborty will give the talk “On Two Problems In Medicine – A View From A Crossroad Of Disciplines” at 7 p.m. at the Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fria Street, in the Santa Fe Railyard. A reception for Chakraborty is at 6:30 p.m.
His talk is the sixth in a series of "q-bio" talks sponsored by the Laboratory’s Center for Nonlinear Studies (T-CNLS) on the emerging scientific field of quantitative biology. All lectures are free and open to the public.
Chakraborty will present research that combines approaches from statistical physics and cell biology to explore how “elite controllers” of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, or individuals who have certain genes that are correlated with greater proclivities for autoimmunity, can control HIV infection without need for therapeutic intervention.
He also will discuss patient-specific stem cells for regenerative medicine. “Cellular states are plastic and even terminally differentiated cells can sometimes be reprogrammed to a pluripotent state; that is, the state of an embryonic stem cell,” he said. “This raises the possibility of creating patient-specific stem cells for regenerative medicine.”
Chakraborty is the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, and Biological Engineering at MIT. After graduating from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (India), he obtained a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of Delaware. He served as the Warren and Katherine Schlinger Distinguished Professor and Chair of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Chemistry, and Professor of Biophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. Later, he headed Theoretical and Computational Biology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
After focusing on quantum and statistical mechanical descriptions of polymers and catalysts, Chakraborty is now involved in the development and application of theoretical and computational approaches to study how T lymphocytes function.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Chakraborty will be introduced by Alan Perelson of Theoretical Biology and Biophysics (T-6), senior Laboratory Fellow.
The q-bio lectures are intended to feature accessible introductions to various aspects of quantitative biology and provide in-depth discussions of specific problems.
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