8 Feb 2008 Bruce Gomes Challenges to the practical application of systems biology in the pharmaceutical environment
15 Feb 2007 Arup Chakraborty How T cells "see" antigen
22 Feb 2007 Gerald Sussman Title to be announced
29 Feb 2007 Mark Alber Title to be announced
7 Mar 2008 Markus Kollmann Adaptation, sequestration and co-regulation - key concepts of robust information processing in cells
14 Mar 2008 Franziska Michor Title to be announced
21 Mar 2008 Leor Weinberger Design principles from viral transcriptional circuits: experiment & theory
28 Mar 2008 Ben Simons Title to be announced
4 Apr 2008 David Miguez Title to be announced
25 Apr 2008 Nicholas Christakis The spread of health phenomena in complex, longitudinally resolved social networks
Two names quickly catched my eyes. One is the last speaker, Nicholas Christakis, who is the new dean of my school (GSAS), and also a distinguished professor of history of medical sciences in my another school (medical school).
The other is, Franziska Michor. She has been mentioned in ptt3-bio-board before, so some of you might have impression on her. She spent only 2 years graduated from the University of Vienna, and then finished her PhD in evolution in 3 years.
During that 3 years, she had 20 papers (11 are first-authored, including 2 on Nature). After that, she got a very outstanding fellowship from my school and spent one year in Dana Faber studying cancer. Then she got a position in Sloan at 2007, when she is just 25.
She is a mathematician, trying to treat cancer by math. She is definitely smart. One magazine actually called her the "Issac Newton of Biology". But the most important of all, she is young, and cute (if you remembered, Jiunn had a very positive view on this point...)
Some people on the Internet call her "Jessica Alba of Biology" (Uh... I have to say Michor is not even close!)
Here is another article from a website called "Science and Supermodels". They made a list for Newton and Michor, and claimed actually Michor wins. It is an interesting article.
Seriously speaking, recent days there are more and more non-biologists jumping in to solve biology questions. Most of them are smart, and can bring something news to this field. However, I still feel the interactions between bio- and non-bio people are not enough. Take Michor as an example, cancer is an extremely complicate case. It indeed resembles evolution in some ways, but talking about to find a cure for it simply by math could still be a long shot (although I have to admit it is extremely difficult for me to understand what she is talking about in her papers).
Looking forward to her talk in March. Then we will know how good she is. Bet there will be more people coming then, probabaly more for Alba rather then Newton, I think.
People say mathematicians have to make an achievement before 30, so I asked Aaron, "what do they do after 30?"
Aaron answered, "they become biologists!"
Well said; well said.
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