Colloquium with Elebeoba E. May on Thursday

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NSF Program Director Elebeoba May will speak in Avery 115 this Thursday, April 26 at 4 p.m. Her talk will be preceded by a reception in 348 at 3:30 p.m.

Elebeoba E. May
Program Director
Systems and Synthetic Biology
Division of Molecular & Cellular Biosciences (BIO/MCB)
Associate Professor and Director for BME Research Program
University of Houston

"Molecular and Cellular Scale Communication – An Engineering Perspective on Biological Systems and Disease"

Abstract: Biological processes are governed by interactions that span the molecular to cellular scales, with biochemical communication networks central to the outcome of these interactions. As such a central theme of our research is the investigation of biological communication systems, starting from the subcellular level and information theoretic analysis of genetic sequences. To provide insight into parallels between genetic mechanisms and information processing systems used in the field of communication engineering, we devised coding theory frameworks to model the translation of messenger RNA (mRNA) into amino acid sequences. Using this functional parallel we investigated the ribosome’s error-detecting capability, applied the coding theory formalism to the identification of translation initiation sites, and developed methods for the design of computational biosensors.

Host-pathogen interactions and the occurrence of disease can be viewed as an emergent property resulting from cellular to molecular scale events actuated by biochemical communication networks that span scales. While the tendency is to study microbial pathogens and their host systems separately or from a host or pathogen centric skew, the nature and dynamics of the interaction between the systems are key determinants in immunity and disease outcome. With the goal of integrating host and pathogen interactions with the biochemical transduction systems that actuate immune response, we developed multiscale, agent-based models (ABM) to explore pathogen adaptation to environmental stress and host response to infection. Our models of infection take into account the myriad of cellular interactions and intracellular networks involved in the dynamic modulation of infection outcome.

Bio: Elebeoba E. May, Ph. D., is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Houston’s Cullen College of Engineering and an Associate Affiliate Member of the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. She earned her Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University and prior to joining the University of Houston held an appointment as a Principal Member Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, USA. As director of the Multi-scale Immunobiology Design, Algorithms, and Simulation (MIDAS) Lab, Dr. May’s research focuses on the design of integrated quantitative and empirical platforms for the development of multi-scale, predictive models of biological and biomolecular systems with an emphasis on host-pathogen interactions, microbial communities, and genetic information processing. The goal of the MIDAS lab is to design mechanistic- based engineering solutions to address challenges in the areas of chronic infection and disease, biodefense, and the growing field of bio-manufacturing. Dr. May is a recipient of an NIH/NHLBI K25 Quantitative Research Career Development Award and her research has been supported by grants from the DoE, DTRA, NIH, and NSF. She currently serves as a Program Director for the Systems and Synthetic Biology Cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences within the NSF Biological Sciences Directorate.