Dear All,
You are most cordially invited to the ICTP 2025 Salam
Distinguished Lecture series by Prof. Aleksandra Walczak, École
normale supérieure, Paris
, on "Prediction in immune repertoires:
learning rules in a self-organised mess".
The lectures will take place (in presence) in the Budinich
Lecture Hall, Leonardo building, on Monday 27 January, at 11:00
and 14:00 hrs, and Tuesday 28 January at 11:00 hrs.
Aleksandra
Walczak received her PhD in physics at the University of
California, San Diego, working on models of stochastic gene
expression. After a graduate fellowship at KITP, she was a
Princeton Center for Theoretical Science Fellow, focusing on
applying information theory to signal processing. Currently she is
a CNRS research director at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris,
interested in collective behaviour, fly development and
statistical descriptions of the immune system. She was awarded the
“Grand Prix Jacques Herbrand de l’Académie des sciences" in 2014,
the bronze medal of CNRS in 2015, the American Physical Society
Fellowship, the Prix Jean Ricard of the French Physics Society in
2021 and the silver medal of CNRS in 2024.
The Salam Distinguished Lecture Series is an annual
presentation of talks by renowned, active scientists. The aim is
to showcase important research developments as well as provide a
visionary forward view. The lecture series is generously supported
by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS).
The overarching title of the three talks will be: "Prediction
in immune repertoires: learning rules in a self-organised mess"
Abstract:
Immune repertoires provide a unique fingerprint reflecting the
immune history of individuals, with potential applications in
precision medicine. Can this information be used to identify a
person uniquely? If it really is a personalised medical record,
can it inform us about the outcomes of a COVID-19 infection? I
will show how even a system as complicated as the immune system
has reproducible outcomes. 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. I will then attempt to
connect data to phenotypic models of evolution and show how the
evolution of pathogens is constrained by selection pressures
coming from immune systems. Together, I will present examples of
how statistical analysis described immune repertoires on different
scales.
There will be 3 lectures with the following titles:
Lecture 1: How personalised is your immune repertoire?
Monday, 27 January 2025 starting at 11:00 hrs
Lecture 2: Optimal immune systems
Monday, 27 January 2025 starting at 14:00 hrs
Light refreshments will be served after the talk.
All are welcome to attend
Lecture 3: Viral—immune co-evolution
Tuesday, 28 January 2025 starting at 11:00 hrs
The lectures will also be livestreamed from the ICTP website
Looking
forward to your participation.
With best regards,
Erica Sarnataro, Quantitative Life Sciences section
for the Director's Office, ICTP