Past Event: Oden Institute Seminar

Self-Organization and Mechanics in the Cell -- Different room # POB 4.304

Michael Shelley, Professor, Center for Computational Biology, Flatiron Institute & Courant Institute, NYU

Abstract

The inside of a cell is an active place, with molecular machines busy positioning subcellular organelles, organizing themselves within membranes, or remodeling chromatin in the nucleus. I will discuss how mathematical modeling and large-scale simulations have interacted with experimental measurements and perturbations of such motor-driven biomechanical processes within the cell. This includes how the spindle finds its place in the cell, which is best treated as a complex mechanical systems that works with transitory elements, and how motor activity and hydrodynamic interactions may underlie an apparently self-organizing dynamics of chromatin in the nucleus. Bio Michael Shelley joined the Simons Foundation in 2016 to work on the modeling and simulation of complex systems arising in physics and biology. He is an applied mathematician who co-founded and co-directs the Courant Institute’s Applied Mathematics Laboratory at New York University. Shelley joined the Courant Institute in 1992 and is the Lilian and George Lyttle Professor of Applied Mathematics. He holds a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and a member of the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago before joining NYU. Shelley has received the François Frenkiel Award from the American Physical Society and the Julian Cole Lectureship from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and he is a Fellow of both societies.