Description:

The Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering presents:

12th Annual Richard S.H. Mah Lectures – Featured Speaker: Dr. Arup Chakraborty

Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, MIT

October 19th, 2016

Pancoe Auditorium, Room 1101
2200 Campus Drive
Arthur and Gladys Pancoe-NSUHS Life Sciences Pavilion
Evanston IL 60208

4:30 PM – Seminar, Rational Design of Vaccines Against Highly Mutable Pathogens: Hitting HIV Where It Hurts with Antibodies

Abstract
Infectious pathogens have plagued humanity since antiquity. Vaccines have successfully combated, and even eradicated, many such pathogens. Indeed, no medical procedure has saved more lives than vaccination. But, today pathogens have evolved that have defied successful vaccination using the paradigms pioneered by Jenner and Pasteur. Many of these infectious agents are highly mutable or present themselves in different guises. HIV is a prominent example. What is required to combat such scourges on the planet is rational, rather than empirical, design of vaccines based on obtaining and harnessing a mechanistic understanding of the pertinent immunology and virology. In these two lectures, I will first discuss the scale of the human toll exacted by HIV infections, and then describe mechanistic studies aimed toward rational design of effective vaccines against such highly mutable pathogens. In this first lecture, the focus will be on computational studies (and complementary experiments) aimed to develop rational vaccination strategies that can induce broadly neutralizing antibodies that neutralize diverse HIV strains.

***5:30 PM – Mah Lecture Reception in the Pancoe NSUHS Cafe

Bio
Arup K. Chakraborty is the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, and Biological Engineering at MIT. He is the founding Director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science. He is also a founding steering committee member of the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. After obtaining his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology (Kanpur), PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware, and postdoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota, he joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley in December 1988. He rose through the ranks, and ultimately served as the Warren and Katherine Schlinger Distinguished Professor and Chair of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Chemistry, and Professor of Biophysics at Berkeley. He was also Head of Theoretical and Computational Biology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In September 2005, Chakraborty moved to MIT. His entire career has been focused on research at the intersection of disciplines. After an early career in engineering of polymers and catalysts, since 2000, Chakraborty’s work has focused on bringing together immunology and statistical physics. Chakraborty's predictive computational/theoretical work has impacted both experimental basic immunology and infectious disease research. He has especially contributed to our understanding of T cell signaling, T cell development and pathogen specificity, the immunological vulnerabilities of HIV and rational vaccine design. Chakraborty’s work has been recognized by numerous honors, including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the E.O. Lawrence Medal for Life Sciences from the US DOE, the Allan P. Colburn and Professional Progress awards from the AIChE, a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, and a National Young investigator award. Chakraborty was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering for different bodies of work. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves on the US Defense Science Board. Chakraborty has received four teaching awards at Berkeley and MIT.