Jeremy Gunawardena

Last updated
Jeremy Gunawardena
Alma mater University of Cambridge (Ph.D.)
Known for Little b
Scientific career
Fields Systems biology, Mathematical biology, Algebraic topology
Institutions Harvard

Jeremy Gunawardena is a mathematician and systems biologist [1] who is Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. [2] He specializes in cellular signalling and decision making. [3]

Contents

Education

He received a BSc in mathematics from Imperial College, London, where he was awarded the Sir John Lubbock Memorial Prize for the highest-ranked first class degree in the University of London. [4] He did Part III of the Mathematical Tripos at Trinity College, Cambridge, for which he was awarded a J T Knight Prize in Class 1, and went on to do his PhD in algebraic topology with Frank Adams at Cambridge. [5]

Career

He was elected to a Research Fellowship in Pure Mathematics at Trinity College. [6] [7] Before taking up his Fellowship, he spent two years as L.E. Dickson Instructor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Chicago. [8] He subsequently spent several years in industrial research at HP Labs in Bristol, UK. [9] At HP Labs, Gunawardena set up the Basic Research Institute in the Mathematical Sciences (BRIMS), a collaboration with the University of Bristol and the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. [10] He also served as a Member of Council of the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). [11] In 2002, Gunawardena become a Visiting Scientist at the Bauer Center for Genomics Research at Harvard. [12] In 2003, he joined the newly formed Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School. [13]

Work

Gunawardena's PhD thesis led to the solution, with Frank Adams and Haynes Miller, of the Segal conjecture for elementary abelian groups7, which provided the algebraic starting point for Gunnar Carlsson's solution of the full conjecture. [14] At the University of Chicago, he helped to set up the first computer science courses at the University. [15] At HP Labs, Gunawardena created the Basic Research Institute in the Mathematical Sciences (BRIMS), a pioneering academic-industrial partnership with the University of Bristol and the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cambridge. [16]

Gunawardena focuses on mathematical techniques in systems biology, including models for post-translational modification [17] (multisite phosphorylation, transcription factor binding ) and other modeling of systems. [18]

At Harvard Medical School, Gunawardena's lab studies information processing in eukaryotic cells, with a focus on mechanisms like post-translational modification, gene regulation and allostery. [19]

One of his most cited papers, "Multisite protein phosphorylation makes a good threshold but can be a poor switch" in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [20] has received 280 citations according to Google Scholar. [21]

Gunawardena introduced, with Aneil Mallavarapu, the programming-with-models approach to virtual cells, which led to the programming language little b. [22]

Together with Marc Kirschner, Lew Cantley, Walter Fontana and Johan Paulsson, he helped set up and co-taught Systems Biology 200, one of the first courses to discuss the core mathematical ideas needed in systems biology. [23] He also founded the weekly series of Theory Lunch chalk talks, which has been running since 2003 and has brought some of the culture of the mathematical sciences into systems biology. [24]

Selected publications

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References

  1. ↑ "Jeremy Gunawardena – Learning and cognition in single biological cells (2 June 2022)". Trinity Japan. 24 January 2022.
  2. ↑ Leigh, Doug; Watkins, Ryan; Gunawardena, Jeremy (17 March 2020). "The Minds of Single-celled Organisms – Jeremy Gunawardena". Parsing Science. doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.12006792.
  3. ↑ "Jeremy Gunawardena gave an online talk titled "Following the energy in cellular information processing" at the IBS Biomedical Mathematics Colloquium". Biomedical Mathematics Group. 18 November 2021.
  4. ↑ Cameron, David. "Biology Enters The Matrix Through New Computer Language". Lab Manager.
  5. ↑ "Jeremy Harin Charles Gunawardena". Mathematics Genealogy Project. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
  6. ↑ "CDS Lecture Series". isr.umd.edu. Retrieved January 17, 2022.
  7. ↑ "Crick Lecture | Jeremy Gunawardena". Crick. 9 July 2024.
  8. ↑ "Jeremy Gunawardena". Biomedical Mathematics Group. Retrieved 2024-07-27.
  9. ↑ "A non-equilibrium view of cellular information processing | BioQuant". www.bioquant.uni-heidelberg.de.
  10. ↑ "Invited seminar at BRIMS, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories". University of Portsmouth.
  11. ↑ "Systems Biology Seminar". UT Southwestern Events Calendar.
  12. ↑ "Biology, Biology and Physics, Biotechnology, and Biotech Management". Nature. 414 (6866): 4. December 2001. doi:10.1038/nj6866-04a.
  13. ↑ "Biology enters 'The Matrix' through new computer language". Phys Org.
  14. ↑ Lück, Wolfgang (2020-04-23). "The Segal conjecture for infinite discrete groups". Algebraic & Geometric Topology. 20 (2): 965–986. arXiv: 1901.09250 . doi:10.2140/agt.2020.20.965. ISSN   1472-2739.
  15. ↑ "Talk of Prof. Jeremy Gunawardena | Event | Apr 30, 2019 | Institute for Systems Theory and Automatic Control | University of Stuttgart". www.ist.uni-stuttgart.de. Retrieved 2024-11-18.
  16. ↑ "Jeremy Gunawardena – Giovanni Armenise Harvard Foundation" . Retrieved 2024-11-18.
  17. ↑ Gunawardena, J; Y Xu (2012). "Realistic enzymology for post-translational modification: zero-order ultrasensitivity revisited". J Theor Biol. 311: 139–152. Bibcode:2012JThBi.311..139X. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2012.07.012. PMC   3432734 . PMID   22828569.
  18. ↑ Gunawardena, J; N Hao; B A Budnik; E K O'Shea (2013). "Tunable signal processing through modular control of transcription factor translocation". Science. 339 (6118): 460–4. Bibcode:2013Sci...339..460H. doi:10.1126/science.1227299. PMC   3746486 . PMID   23349292.
  19. ↑ Tyson, John J.; Novák, Béla (2015-07-01). "Models in biology: lessons from modeling regulation of the eukaryotic cell cycle". BMC Biology. 13 (1): 46. doi: 10.1186/s12915-015-0158-9 . ISSN   1741-7007. PMC   4486427 . PMID   26129844.
  20. ↑ PNAS full text
  21. ↑ "Google Scholar".
  22. ↑ "Little b - Programming language". pldb.io. Retrieved 2024-11-18.
  23. ↑ "Jeremy Gunawardena | Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology". ssqbiophd.hms.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-18.
  24. ↑ "2023 Seminars | Applied Mathematics". appliedmath.brown.edu. Retrieved 2024-11-18.
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