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, TODAY, Monday 27 January,
at 11:00 and 14:00 hrs, and TOMORROW, 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