Physics Colloquium Series (10.31) | Aleksandra Walczak

The David and Edith Harris Physics Colloquium Series

Speaker: Aleksandra Walczak | CNRS and ENS, Paris

"Prediction in immune repertoires"

Living systems often attempt to calculate and predict the future state of the environment. Given the stochastic nature of many biological systems how is that possible? I will show that even a system as complicated as the immune system has reproducible observables. Yet predicting the future state of a complex environment requires weighing the trust in new observations against prior experiences. In this light, I will present a view of the adaptive immune system as a dynamic Bayesian machinery that updates its memory repertoire by balancing evidence from new pathogen encounters against past experience of infection to predict and prepare for future threats.

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The lecture will take place in 10-250, starting at 4pm.
Pre-Colloquium Social in room 4-349 will begin at 3:30pm, refreshments will be served.

For questions, contact Ryan Higgins at higginsr@mit.edu

See future Physics Colloquium lectures at: https://web.mit.edu/physics/events/colloquia.html