brunch, 17 July 2022, at Mary & Jeremy's, photo set up by Andres Florez
together again after 2 years!
brunch, 17 July 2022, at Mary & Jeremy's, photo set up by Andres Florez |
| previous years |
Postdoctoral fellow |
I am a biophysicist with a wide range of interests varying from osmotic fitness of bacteria to stochastic processes to non-equilibrium statistical physics. I graduated from Bogazici University with a B.A. in Physics and received my PhD degree in Biophysics from University of Maryland, College Park where I worked with Professor Sergei Sukharev on the nanoscale thermodynamics of mechanosensitive ion channels. One of the most fundamental differences between bacterial and eukaryotic gene regulation is energy expenditure. While equilibrium thermodynamics successfully describes the events that take place during bacterial gene regulation, the existence of highly dissipative processes begs the question of whether the equilibrium formalism could describe the enormous molecular complexity in eukaryotic gene regulation. In the Gunawardena Lab, I will develop the theoretical framework and design experiments to check whether or not gene regulatory systems are operating away from equilibrium. last updated on 19 September 2018 |
Professor |
I used to be a very pure mathematician, an algebraic topologist, but fell from grace some years ago (to borrow Marc Kac's gracious way of putting it) when I was a Dickson Instructor in the Mathematics Department at the University of Chicago. I volunteered to teach computer science, which made me interested in complexity, which eventually led to a long stint in industrial research at HP (Hewlett-Packard) Labs, where I ran part of the company's "blue skies" research programme. Post-genome systems biology brought complexity to centre stage and brought me to Harvard, to the Bauer Centre for Genomics Research at Harvard College and then to Marc Kirschner's Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. I am in the process of moving to Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, in part to pursue new ideas about cellular learning. last updated on 1 June 2025 |
Biophysics rotation student |
I am currently a first year PhD student in the biophysics program, with an undergrad background in mathematics and biochemistry from the University of Chicago. I am broadly interested in mathematical biology, and had some brief training in undergrad in the areas of population genetics and wet-lab protein biochemistry. In the Gunawardena lab, I will be working on some theoretical analysis of single molecule footprinting data of transcription factor binding with the aim of determining whether the processes of transcription factor and nucleosome binding occur at equilibrium. last updated on 12 July 2024 |