Stanislas Leibler to Discuss Lessons from Bacteria in Lecture at Institute for Advanced Study
Stanislas Leibler, Professor in the Simons Center for Systems Biology in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, will speak on “Survival in the Face of the Unknown: Lessons from Bacteria” on Wednesday, December 7, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus.
Leibler has made important contributions to theoretical and experimental biology, successfully extending the interface between physics and biology to develop new solutions and approaches to problems. Interested in the quantitative description of microbial systems, both on cellular and population levels, he is developing the theoretical and experimental methods necessary for studying the collective behavior of biomolecules, cells and organisms. By selecting a number of basic questions about how simple genetic and biochemical networks function in model organisms, Leibler and his laboratory colleagues are beginning to understand how individual components can give rise to complex, collective phenomena.
In this talk, Leibler will explain how growing bacteria are subject to different types of environmental changes. Some changes are regular: for example, daily variations of light intensity. Others are stochastic, such as the random appearance of predators or toxins. He will discuss how bacteria have developed an astonishing panoply of strategies to survive in fluctuating environments and how the mechanisms underlying adaptive microbial behaviors and their consequences are only beginning to be understood. Leibler will describe recent experimental and theoretical studies of some of these complex phenomena.
Leibler did his undergraduate studies in Physics at the University of Warsaw. He earned an M.S. degree in theoretical physics in 1979 and a Ph.D. in 1984 from the University of Paris. He joined the Centre d'Études de Saclay as a Visiting Researcher in 1978 and was a Research Associate from 1979–84 and Research Fellow from 1984–92. From 1985 to 1987, he was a Visiting Research Associate at Cornell University. He joined the faculty of Princeton University in 1992 as a Professor, a position he held until 2001. In 1997–98, Leibler was a von Humboldt Fellow and Visiting Scientist at the European Molecular Biological Laboratory in Heidelberg, and in 2000–01, he was an Investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
In 2001, Leibler was named the Gladys T. Perkin Professor and Head of Laboratory at the Rockefeller University, and in 2003 he became a Tri-Institutional Professor at the Rockefeller University, Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research and Weill Medical College at Cornell University. He became a Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2009, a position he holds jointly with his appointment at Rockefeller University.
For further information about the lecture, which is free and open to the public, please call (609) 734-8175, or visit the Public Events page on the Institute website, www.ias.edu.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.