Invitation to the 2025 Salam Distinguished Lecture series by Prof. Aleksandra Walczak, on "Prediction in immune repertoires: learning rules in a self-organised mess" on 27-28 January 2025, Budinich Lecture Hall

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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

More information can be found at the following link: 
https://indico.ictp.it/event/10923


Looking forward to your participation.

With best regards,

Erica Sarnataro, Quantitative Life Sciences section

for the Director's Office, ICTP