Date May 12, 2025, 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Location Jadwin Hall Audience Physics/Biophysics faculty, post docs, grad students Share on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Speaker Andrew Yates Affiliation Columbia University Details Event Description Vertebrate immune systems face an astonishing challenge. They are equipped to recognize small molecular signatures, and using this information must be able to discriminate between innocuous stimuli such as self-antigens or benign commensal organisms, and pathogenic stimuli from infections and altered self (cancer). To each they must respond appropriately, either to actively maintain tolerance or to respond aggressively in a targeted and tailored manner.T cells make up an indispensable component of this system, and to meet this challenge they undergo complex processes of selection and diversification. In this talk I will describe some examples of how mathematical modeling coupled to dedicated experiments can shed light on the mechanisms by which T cells make decisions, from their development in the thymus through to their persistence as dynamic populations encoding immunological memory.