College of Science Distinguished Speaker: The Machines of the Cell

College of Science Distinguished Speaker
The Machines of the Cell

Dr. Michael Shelley
Professor of Mathematics, Neural Science, and Mechanical Engineering
Director, Center for Computational Biology
The Flatiron Institute, Simons Foundation

Abstract:
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is said to have said that living things are machines made of machines (as are, of course, the machines of ever increasing complexity that we humans design and use). Pumping hearts, filtering kidneys, and maybe the calculating brain, likely come to your mind as submachines within the human body. Dr. Shelley will discuss biological machines, far far smaller, that operate within living cells. These machines can assemble and disassemble themselves, can have thousands of parts (often identical), and do things like move genetic material to where it needs to be as the cell divides, and create little tornadoes within egg cells that help them develop. These micro-machines are themselves powered by yet smaller machines -- motor proteins -- that have evolved to work within this strangely beautiful world. Dr. Shelley will share how we use mathematics, modeling, and very large computers to understand how these machines of the cell work and function.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Michael J. Shelley is an applied mathematician who works on the modeling and simulation of complex systems arising in physics and biology. This has included free-boundary problems in fluids and materials science, singularity formation in partial differential equations, modeling visual perception in the primary visual cortex, dynamics of complex and active fluids, cellular biophysics, and fluid-structure interaction problems such as the flapping of flags, stream-lining in nature, and flapping flight. He is  the co-founder and co-director of the Courant Institute's Applied Mathematics Lab at New York University, and is also the Director of the Center for Computational Biology at the Flatiron Institute.  He holds a B.A. in mathematics from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University and a member of the mathematics faculty at the University of Chicago before joining NYU. Shelley has received the François Frenkiel Award from the American Physical Society and the Julian Cole Lectureship from the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, and he is a Fellow of both societies. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Intended Audience:
Those with interest in the topic.