Events

Past Event

BME WEBINAR SERIES: Ravi Radhakrishnan, PhD, BIOE Chair, University of Pennsylvania

October 23, 2020
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
America/New_York
Online
On Friday, October 23rd @ 11:00AM EDT, we welcome Prof. Ravi Radhakrishnan, Professor and Chair of Bioengineering / Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at University of Pennsylvania as he presents, "Applications of Statistical Mechanics, Data Science, High Performance Computing to Biomolecular, Biomedical Research." ABOUT THE SEMINAR The talk will focus on building predictive models in cell biology and bioengineering using equilibrium and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and collaboratively validating such models in in vitro physical science-based experiments, in vivo in cell culture, and in vivo in organisms. The first theme will focus on targeted drug delivery using functionalized nanoparticles for nanomedicine applications. Here we will discuss our efforts in building multiscale models for rigid and flexible nanoparticle targeting to live cells with hydrodynamic, physiological, and molecular factors taken into account. In the second theme, we discuss in relation to tumors of the soft tissues, the question “Can Soft Signals Turn Oncogenic?” There are emerging links between the stiffness of the tissue microenvironment and the tumorogenicity in several tumors of soft tissues, thereby bringing to light the importance of how cells transduce mechanical signals to alter signals and cell fate. We focus on molecular and subcellular mechanisms of curvature induction and sensing in cell membranes by a novel class of membrane remodeling proteins. We demonstrate how membrane morphologies such as protrusions can serve as signaling hubs to initiate and sustain survival as well as proliferative pathways in single cells that are initiated solely by physical stimulus and without any external biochemical cues. These works are funded by US NIH, NSF, and EU ERC. ABOUT THE SPEAKER Ravi Radhakrishnan, PhD Professor and Chair of Bioengineering; Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering University of Pennsylvania Dr. Radhakrishnan directs a computational research laboratory with research interests at the interface of biophysics, chemical physics, and biomedical engineering. His lab specializes in several computational algorithms spanning the molecular and cellular scales, in conjunction with the theoretical formalisms of statistical mechanics, and applications of high-performance scientific computing in parallel architectures. He is the Working Group Leader of the High-performance Computing working group of the Inter Agency Modeling Group, a think tank started by the NIH. He is also a founding member and former director of Penn Institute for Computational Science. He has successful and funded collaborations with pharmacologists, cell biologists, biophysical chemists, anesthesiologists, and oncologists primarily through grants from US National Science Foundation, US National Institutes of Health, and the European Research Council. Honors and Awards: He has received the Hewlett Packard Investigator award and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers. ABOUT THE 2020-2021 BME WEBINAR SERIES The Department of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University is proud to host an annual weekly webinar series on the latest developments and research in Biomedical Engineering. The weekly series takes place on Friday mornings at 11:00AM Eastern and includes a variety of renowned academics from top universities to talk about their specific research and experience.

Contact Information

Alexis Newman