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Committee Biographies
WILLIAM BIALEK, NAS, Chair, is the John Archibald Wheeler/Battelle Professor in Physics at Princeton University. He also is a member of the multidisciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute. In addition to his responsibilities at Princeton, he has served as a visiting faculty member at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he helped to launch an Initiative for the Theoretical Sciences. Educated in the San Francisco public schools, he attended the University of California, Berkeley, receiving an AB (1979) and a PhD (1983) in biophysics. After postdoctoral appointments at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen in the Netherlands and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, he returned to Berkeley to join the faculty in 1986. In late 1990 he moved to the newly formed NEC Research Institute (now the NEC Laboratories) in Princeton, where he eventually became an institute fellow. Dr. Bialek’s research interests have ranged over a wide variety of theoretical problems at the interface of physics and biology, from the dynamics of individual biological molecules to learning and cognition. Best known for contributions to our understanding of coding and computation in the brain, Dr. Bialek and collaborators have shown that aspects of brain function can be described as essentially optimal strategies for adapting to the complex dynamics of the world, making the most of the available signals in the face of fundamental physical constraints and limitations. More recently, he has followed these ideas of optimization into the early events of embryonic development and the processes by which all cells make decisions about when to read out the information stored in their genes. Throughout his career Dr. Bialek has been involved both in helping to establish biological physics as a discipline within physics and in helping biology to
absorb the quantitative intellectual tradition of the physical sciences. For 25 years Dr. Bialek participated in summer courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, serving as the co-director of the computational neuroscience course in the summers of 1998 through 2002. He also helped lead a major educational experiment at Princeton to create a truly integrated and mathematically sophisticated introduction to the natural sciences for first-year college students. He has received the Max Delbrück Prize in Biological Physics from the American Physical Society and the Swartz Prize in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, among other honors.
BRIDGET CARRAGHER is the co-director of the Simons Electron Microscopy Center at the New York Structural Biology Center and an adjunct professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University. She received her PhD in biophysics from the University of Chicago in 1987. She worked in a variety of positions, both in industry and academia, until moving to the Scripps Research Institute in 2001. Since 2002 she has served, together with Clint Potter, as the director of the National Resource for Automated Molecular Microscopy (NRAMM), a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded national biotechnology research resource. The focus of NRAMM is the development of automated imaging techniques for solving three-dimensional structures of macromolecular complexes using cryo-transmission electron microscopy (cryoEM). The overall goal is to develop new methods to improve the entire process, from specimen preparation to the generation of the final three-dimensional map. In 2007 Dr. Carragher co-founded a new company, NanoImaging Services, Inc., whose goal is to provide cryoEM and other microscopy services to the biopharmaceutical and biotechnology industry. She serves as the chief technology officer of NanoImaging Services. In 2015, Drs. Carragher and Potter moved their academic laboratory from the Scripps Research Institute to the New York Structural Biology Center where they serve as the co-directors of the Simons Electron Microscopy Center. There they have established two additional NIH-funded national centers, the National Center for CryoEM Access and Training and the National Center for In-situ Tomographic Ultramicroscopy, as well as the Simons Machine Learning Center funded by the Simons Foundation.
IBRAHIM I. CISSÉ is currently the director of Max Planck Gesellschaft, heading the Department of Biological Physics at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany. Prior to this, he was a professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology, and before, an associate professor with tenure in physics (and biology by courtesy) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his bachelor in physics in 2004 from North Carolina Central University, and his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 2009. He moved to Paris from 2010 to 2012, where he was
a postdoctoral fellow at Ecole Normale Supérieure. He moved back to the United States in 2013, as a research specialist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus before joining MIT in 2014 as a junior faculty. His research on single molecule and super-resolution imaging has been recognized through many honors, including being named a Pew Biomedical Scholar, a National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator awardee, Science News “SN10 Scientists to Watch,” a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedicine, and a MacArthur fellow.
MICHAEL M. DESAI is a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and physics at Harvard University. Prior to this, Dr. Desai received a BA in physics from Princeton University and a PhD in physics from Harvard University. He then worked as a fellow at the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and Princeton University. He currently studies evolutionary dynamics and population genetics, primarily in microbial and viral systems. His group uses a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches to study how genetic variation is created and maintained. They also develop methods to infer the evolutionary history of populations from the variation observed in sequence data. Their focus is primarily on the dynamics and population genetics of natural selection in asexual populations such as microbes and viruses, which are often dominated by the random fluctuations in when and where rare mutational events occur. They are developing new approaches to population genetic theory to better understand the structure of genetic variation in these populations. To complement this theoretical work, the lab has developed high-throughput techniques that allow them to directly observe the evolution of thousands of experimental budding yeast populations simultaneously, tracking changes in fitness and other phenotypic characteristics and correlating these with the evolution of genetic variation within and between populations.
OLGA K. DUDKO is a professor in the Department of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. She received her PhD in theoretical physics at the B. Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics and Engineering in Kharkov, Ukraine, where she worked in condensed matter physics. She had postdoctoral appointments at Tel Aviv University in Israel and at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. The theory of single-molecule force spectroscopy developed by Dudko and collaborators has been widely adopted as a quantitative framework for extracting activation energies and rate constants of conformational transitions in macromolecules. Dr. Dudko’s current research covers a range of problems in theoretical biological physics and is motivated by the notion that deep physics-based conceptual approaches can encompass living-systems complexity. Her research group is interested in physical
principles of the spatiotemporal organization of the genome, and of the membrane fusion-mediated processes ranging from viral infection to neuronal communication. Their approach is to capture these principles in the form of analytically tractable physical theories that are reasonably simple and abstract yet generate concrete experimentally testable predictions. Dr. Dudko also serves as associate editor at Physical Review Letters. She was recently named a Simons Investigator and a fellow of the American Physical Society.
DANIEL I. GOLDMAN is a Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his BS in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and his PhD in 2002 from The University of Texas at Austin, studying nonlinear dynamics and granular media (working with Harry Swinney). He did postdoctoral work in locomotion biomechanics at the University of California, Berkeley (working with Robert J. Full). Dr. Goldman’s group focuses on discovery of principles individuals and collectives of organisms use to effectively interact with their environments, largely focusing on self-propulsion (locomotion). He compares bio and neuromechanical measurements of behavior to computational and theoretical models and has developed the “robophysics” approach to use robots (and robot collectives) as physical models of living systems. His group also studies the soft matter physics relevant to organism-environment interactions. Dr. Goldman is the lead of the Georgia Tech node in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Physics of Living Systems Student Research network and has been an instructor in the International Hands-On Research in Complex Systems School (now at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics). Dr. Goldman has received numerous awards, including a Burroughs Wellcome Career Award at the Scientific Interface and an NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.
JANÉ KONDEV is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics at Brandeis University. He works primarily on problems in molecular and cell biology. He earned his PhD in physics from Cornell University in 1995. Dr. Kondev’s research in the physical biology of the cell focuses on three distinct areas: regulation of gene expression, structure of chromosomes and their function, and dynamics of the cytoskeleton. He employs a combination of theory and experimentation on single molecules and single cells. Dr. Kondev established the Quantitative Biology Research Community (QBReC) that consists of undergraduate researchers who, while majoring in different fields of science, conduct collaborative research on specific biological problems and function as a single interdisciplinary research group. The QBReC program includes a freshman year laboratory and lecture course, which introduces students to science in an integrated fashion, combining physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics, and collaborative research and mentorship opportunities.
PETER B. LITTLEWOOD is a professor of physics at the University of Chicago. Dr. Littlewood previously served as the director of Argonne National Laboratory, and before that was a professor of physics at the University of Cambridge and head of the Cavendish Laboratory. He is the founding executive chair of the Faraday Institution, the United Kingdom’s independent center for electrochemical energy storage science and technology supporting research, training, and analysis. He began his career with almost 20 years at Bell Laboratories, ultimately serving for 5 years as the head of Theoretical Physics Research. His research interests include superconductivity and superfluids, strongly correlated electronic materials, collective dynamics of glasses, density waves in solids, neuroscience, and applications of materials for energy and sustainability. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Institute of Physics, the American Physical Society, and TWAS (The World Academy of Sciences). He serves on advisory boards of research and education institutions and other scientific organizations worldwide. He holds a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences (physics) and a doctorate in physics, both from the University of Cambridge.
ANDREA J. LIU, NAS, is the Hepburn Professor of Physics in the University of Pennsylvania Department of Physics and Astronomy. Prior to becoming a professor, she received her PhD in physics from Cornell University, followed by being a postdoctoral fellow at the Exxon Research and Engineering Company, and then a postdoctoral appointment at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She then worked as a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, before moving to the University of Pennsylvania. Her research group uses a combination of analytical theory and numerical simulation to study problems in soft matter physics ranging from jamming in glass-forming liquids, foams, and granular materials, to biophysical self-assembly in actin structures and other systems. The idea of jamming is that slow relaxations in many different systems, ranging from glass-forming liquids to foams and granular materials, can be viewed in a common framework. For example, one can define jamming to occur when a system develops a yield stress or extremely long stress relaxation time in a disordered state. According to this definition, many systems jam. Colloidal suspensions of particles are fluid but jam when the pressure or density is raised. Foams and emulsions (concentrated suspensions of deformable bubbles or droplets) flow when a large shear stress is applied, but jam when the shear stress is lowered below the yield stress. Even molecular liquids jam as temperature is lowered or density is increased; this is the glass transition. They have been testing the speculation that jamming has a common origin in these different systems, independent of the control parameter varied. On the biophysical side, her research has been motivated recently by the phenomenon of cell crawling. The morphology of the resulting structure is of
special interest because it determines the mechanical properties of the network. Her group is developing dynamical descriptions that capture morphology. In addition, they are exploring models for how actin polymerization gives rise to force generation at the leading edge.
MARY E. MAXON is the associate laboratory director for biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Dr. Maxon oversees LBNL’s Biological Systems and Engineering, Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology, and Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Divisions and the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. She earned her BS in biology and chemistry from the State University of New York, Albany, and her PhD in molecular cell biology from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Maxon has worked in the private sector, both in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the public sector, highlighted by her tenure as the assistant director for biological research at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Executive Office of the President.
JOSÉ N. ONUCHIC, NAS, is the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry and Biosciences at Rice University and the co-director of the National Science Foundation–sponsored Center for Theoretical Biological Physics. His research looks at theoretical methods for molecular biophysics and gene networks. He has introduced the concept of protein folding funnels. Energy landscape theory and the funnel concept provide the framework needed to pose and to address the questions of protein folding and function mechanisms. He developed the tunneling pathways concept for electron transfer in proteins. He is also interested in stochastic effects in genetic networks with applications to bacteria decision-making and cancer. Further expanding his ideas coming from energy landscapes for protein folding, his group is now exploring chromatin folding and function and therefore modeling the three-dimensional structure of the genome. He has received much recognition for his scientific achievements. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006 for his contributions to understanding of protein folding and electron tunneling inside proteins. He received the International Centre for Theoretical Physics Prize in honor of Werner Heisenberg in Trieste, Italy (1989), and the Beckman Young Investigator Award (1992). He is a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) (1995), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2009), the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2009), and the Biophysical Society (2012). He was awarded the Einstein Professorship by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (2011). In 2014 he received the Diaspora Prize from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industrial Development and Foreign Trade from Brazil. In 2015 he was awarded The International Union of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Medal. In 2017 he was elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and in 2018 he was admitted to the Grã-Cruz class of the Ordem Nacional do Mérito Científico by the Brazilian government. In 2019 he received the Max Delbrück prize in Biological Physics of APS, and he received the title of Honorary Professor from his alma mater, Instituto de Física de São Carlos. In 2020 he was appointed by Pope Francis as an academician at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
MARK J. SCHNITZER is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a professor at Stanford University with a joint appointment in the Department of Biology and the Department of Applied Physics. He is the co-director of the Cracking the Neural Code Program at Stanford University and a faculty member of the Neuroscience, Biophysics, and Molecular Imaging Programs in the Stanford School of Medicine. Dr. Schnitzer received his PhD from Princeton University in physics prior to his appointment at Stanford University. His research concerns the innovation of novel optical imaging technologies and their use in the pursuit of understanding neural circuits. The Schnitzer Lab has invented two forms of fiber-optic imaging, one- and two-photon fluorescence microendoscopy, which enable minimally invasive imaging of cells in deep brain tissues. The lab is further developing microendoscopy technology, studying how experience or environment alters neuronal properties, and exploring two different clinical applications. The group has also developed two complementary approaches to imaging neuronal and astrocytic dynamics in awake behaving animals. Much research focuses on cerebellum-dependent forms of motor learning. By combining imaging, electrophysiological, behavioral, and computational approaches, the lab seeks to understand cerebellar dynamics underlying learning, memory, and forgetting. Further work in the lab concerns neural circuitry in other mammalian brain areas such as the hippocampus and neocortex, as well as the neural circuitry of Drosophila.
CLARE M. WATERMAN, NAS, is a distinguished investigator, the chief of the Laboratory of Cell and Tissue Morphodynamics, and the director of the Cell Biology and Physiology Center at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Waterman received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry in 1989 from Mount Holyoke College and her MS in exercise science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, prior to obtaining her PhD in cell biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. After completing postdoctoral training at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in 1999, she joined the Department of Cell Biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. After obtaining tenure at Scripps as an associate professor, Dr. Waterman joined the NHLBI in 2007. She has also trained hundreds of PhD candidates and postdoctoral scholars through her teaching in the physiology course at the Marine
Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where she served as faculty from 2000–2009, and as its first female director from 2009–2014. The physiology course is an intensive 7-week laboratory summer course that has run for over 125 years. It is designed to bring together senior PhD candidates and early postdoctoral researchers to work on cutting-edge questions in cell physiology. Her research program is focused on understanding how proteins self-organize into cell-scale macromolecular ensembles that mediate the dynamic morphological and physical processes driving cell migration. The ability of cells to directionally move is critical to embryogenesis, development of the vascular and nervous systems, immune response and wound healing, and its regulation is compromised in vascular disease, immune disease, and cancer. Dr. Waterman invented the method of fluorescent speckle microscopy and used this and other state-of-the art light microscopy methods to elucidate how macromolecular protein complexes self-organize at the cell-scale to mediate directed physical outputs that drive specific cell shape change and movement. She has pioneered an integrated approach that demonstrates how cellular structures composed of the microtubule, filamentous actin, and integrin adhesion proteins are dynamically built and maintained; how they physically interact with one another; and how cell signaling coordinates their structure and dynamics to specifically mediate cell migration. Her work has shown that specific transient protein-protein interactions in a “molecular clutch” generate organized and directed forces in the cytoskeleton and transmit them through integrin-based focal adhesions to the extracellular environment to drive cell motility and morphogenesis of the vasculature.
