The Computational and Systems Biology PhD Program will be traveling up to Kennebunkport, ME this fall! Mark your calendars and plan to join us for a day and half of student and faculty talks, an evening poster session, lobster buffet, a career panel, fun and more!
We will depart Sunday morning at 8:30AM Sunday October 8th 2017 from MIT and arrive at the beautiful Colony Hotel.
All student faculty and alumni invited!
Photo Credit: J. Teo
Dr. Becky Lamason
Assistant Professor, Department of Biology, MIT
Becky Lamason investigates the strategies used by diverse bacterial pathogens to reprogram host machinery during infection. Becky received a B.S. in Molecular Biology/Biotechnology from Millersville University and a Ph.D. in Immunology from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. As a postdoctoral fellow in Matthew Welch’s lab at UC Berkeley, she received a fellowship with the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation, and an NIH Pathway to Independence Award. During her postdoctoral work, she discovered that intracellular bacterial pathogens spread throughout our tissues by targeting host intercellular communication pathways and manipulating different force-generating machinery, ultimately revealing exciting mechanisms of host-pathogen interactions. As a new member of the Biology Department, the Lamason lab will continue to investigate the process of bacterial cell-to-cell spread, combining genetic, cell biological, biochemical and biophysical approaches to reveal how bacteria manipulate host cells to promote pathogenesis.
Email: rlamason[at] mit [dot] edu
Seminar
Date: Sunday October 8, 2017 12:00 – 12:30 pm
Title: “Tension, trafficking, and translocation: how bacteria hijack host cell pathways during spread”
Dr. Tami Lieberman
Assistant Professor of Institute for Medical Engineering & Science, MIT (Starting January 2018)
Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT (Starting January 2018)
Tami trained in molecular biology and mathematics at Northwestern University, where she conducted research in the laboratory of Jon Widom and was funded by a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship. She then earned a PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard University, where she conducted research in Roy Kishony’s laboratory. During her graduate research, Tami developed new genomic approaches for understanding how bacteria evolve during infections of individual people. As a postdoc in Eric Alm’s lab at MIT, she further developed and applied these genomic approaches to understand the microbes that colonize us during health. Tami has also made contributions to our understanding of antibiotic resistance, including the co-invention of a new platform for visualizing evolution in real time. The Lieberman Lab, opening at MIT in January 2018, will use computational and experimental methods to uncover the principles governing colonization, niche range, and personalization in the human microbiome.
Email: tami [at] mit [dot] edu
Seminar
Date: Monday October 9, 2017 10:45 – 11:15 am
Title: “Adaptation and diversification of commensal bacteria within humans”
Dr. Elena Rivas
Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University
Elena Rivas started her career as a theoretical physicist with a Ph.D. from the University of Zaragoza, Spain. After a postdoctoral position at UCLA in physics in 1997, she switched to computational biology, where she has been working ever since. As a Sloan Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, Elena worked on computational algorithms for RNA structure prediction. She introduced one of the first exact algorithms to describe a particular type of RNA structure called pseudoknots. Later as a research associate, she developed one of the first RNA genefinding programs, which was applied to E.coli, yeast, and nematodes. As a Fellow at Janelia Research Campus, she put her efforts into mathematical models of evolution that could improve existing methods for homology detection, while continuing her work on RNA genes by extensively exploring a wide range of probabilistic method to improve existing methods based on thermodynamic parameters. Currently a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard, Elena is working on characterizing RNA base pair covariations that could identify conserved RNA structures. R-scape her new method is a statistical tool to find novel conserved structural RNAs.
Email: elenarivas [at] fas [dot] Harvard [dot] edu
Seminar
Date: Sunday October 8, 2017 2:00 – 2:30 pm
Title: “A statistical test of RNA base pair covariation applied to proposed long noncoding RNA structures”
