IISER MOHALI

Abstract: Our immune system has evolved remarkably complex strategies to combat pathogens. For the most part, it works beautifully. Occasionally, though, it is found wanting. The costs then are high. Recent advances in experimental techniques have begun to offer unprecedented insights into the workings of the immune system that help better understand its limitations. These insights, together with earlier studies, create a view of the immune system that draws from the physical and engineering sciences. Control, optimization, and learning processes among others are evident, embedded intriguingly in the biochemical, biophysical, and genetic players involved. Characterizing these processes offers new tools for manipulating the immune system, including via vaccine design. In this talk, using examples from our work, I will offer a glimpse of the prominent design principles governing the immune system and highlight efforts to engineer it.

About the Speaker: Prof. Narendra Dixit leads the Therapeutic Engineering Laboratory in the Chemical Engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is also an Associate Faculty of the Department of Bioengineering. He received his BTech from IIT Bombay and MS and PhD from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), all in Chemical Engineering. He did postdoctoral studies at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA before joining IISc. He serves on the editorial boards of PLoS Computational Biology and mBio. His interests are in computational biology, focusing on infectious diseases and microbiomes (https://chemeng.iisc.ac.in/telab/).