The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Uri Alon, Ph.D., professor, department of molecular cell biology, Weizmann Institute of Science

Speaker bio(s)

Organisms, tissues, and molecules often need to perform multiple tasks. But usually no phenotype can be optimal at all tasks at once. This leads to a fundamental tradeoff. Dr. Alon studies this using the concept of Pareto optimality from engineering and economics. Tradeoffs lead to an unexpected simplicity in the range of optimal phenotypes—they fall on low-dimensional shapes in trait space such as lines, triangles, and tetrahedrons. At the vertices of these polygons are phenotypes that specialize at a single task. Dr. Alon’s laboratory demonstrates this using data from animal and fossil morphology, bacterial gene expression, and other biological systems.

 

Dr. Alon is one of the pioneers of systems biology. His work defined the small set of recurring circuits in biological systems, called network motifs. He combines experiment and theory to understand general principles in biology. He also writes, advocates, and sings about the importance of human relationships in science.

 

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dr. Alon earned both his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1996, he received his Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science. After conducting postdoctoral research at Princeton University, he joined the department of molecular cell biology at the Weizmann Institute as a senior scientist in 1999. He was promoted to associate professor in 2004 and full professor in 2008. Dr. Alon, who is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and has published more than 120 highly cited papers, is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Moore Fellowship from the California Institute of Technology in 2000; the EMBO Young Investigator Award in 2001; the IBM Faculty Award, the Minerva Junior Research Group on Biological Computation Fellowship, and the Morris L. Levinson Prize in Biology from the Scientific Council of the Weizmann Institute of Science, all in 2003; the Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology in 2004; the Teva Founders Prize for Biomedical Research in 2005; the Michael Bruno Memorial Award in 2009; the Radcliffe Fellowship in 2009; and the Nakasone Award from the Human Frontier Science Program in 2014.

Open to

Public

Host

Stanislas Leibler, Ph.D.

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Linda Hanssler

Phone

(212) 327-7714

Sponsor

Linda Hanssler
(212) 327-7714
lhanssler@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=4172