Pankaj Mehta

Professor of Physics 

Faculty of Computing and Data Science

Biological Design Center

Center for Regenerative Medicine

Boston University

Office: SCI 323

Phone: 617-358-6303

Boston University 

Department of Physics

590 Commonwealth Avenue,

Boston, MA 02139

Email: pankajm AT bu.edu

Aspiring to be the J Dilla of theoretical biophysics

Cirriculum vitae

Research Interests:

I am interested in theoretical problems at the interface of physics and biology. I want to understand how large-scale, collective behaviors observed in biological systems emerge from the interaction of many individual components -- whether it be molecules that allow cells to do complex computations, the emergence of cell fate in development, or trying to identify and explain the emergence of universal statistical behaviors in microbial ecosystems. I also have a running interest in problems at the intresection of machine learning and statistical physics. Ocassionally, usually spurred by an interesting conversation with a friend, I also work on some problems in quantum condensed matter (especially quantum dynamics and nonequilibrium phenomena). A summary of some of my thoughts on theory in biology can be found in this recent essay I wrote arguing that we need a twenty first century stastical physics of life.

I am a theoretical physicist but the group's research in quite inter-disciplinary. I am part of the new Faculty of Computing and Data Science, the BU Microbiome Initiative, BU Bioinformatics, the Center for Regenerative Medicine (CReM), and the BU Biological Design Center. To find out more about my research please look at my publications with links to pdf files. You can also check out my Google Scholar page.

Beyond science, I have a running interest in radical politics, sociology, and political economy (much of which I have learned from some wonderful teachers). Some of my writings can be found here. I am also part of the Gracie Barra Boston community.

All our recent codes can be found on our Github repository Emergent Behaviors in Biology. Older code generated by the group can be found here.

Group Members:

Krishna Rijal (Postdoc),Siqi Liu (Postdoc), Maria Yampolskaya (Graduate Student), Zhijie "Sarah" Feng (Graduate Student), Huan Souza (Graduate Student), Brock Ewing (undegrad).

Alumni:

Postdocs: Charles Fisher (Founder/CTO of machine learning start-up unlearn.AI, San Francisco, CA), Bobby Marsland (Theology Ph.D.,Pontifical University of the Holy Cross), Lauren Alex Golden (Computational Scientist at Broad Institute), Jason Rocks (AI/ML Research Scientist, Dayhoff Labs)

Graduate Students: Javad Noorbakhsh (Computational Scientist II, Broad Institute), Alex Lang (Technical Staff at Perplexity), Alexandre Day (Director of Data Science, Capital One), Ching-Hao Wang (Directon of AI/ML Engineering, GSK), Wenping Cui (KITP Fellow, UCSB; Postdoc, Princeton).

Undergrads: Joseph Sarmiego-Evans (Graduate school at Colorado Physics), Steven (Wooseok) Ahn, Maddie Dickens (NSF Graduate Fellowship, Berkeley Physics), Owen Howell (NSF Graduate Fellowship, Chicago Physics), Emmy Blumenthal (Hertz Fellow, Princeton)

Honorary Group Members: Marin Bukov (Group leader, Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden), Josh Goldford (Co-founder, Dayhoff Labs), Ed Reznik (MSKCC Computational Oncology Faculty)

Other Friends/Regular Collaborators of the group:

Caleb Bashor, Brian Cleary, Laertis Ikonomou, Jane Kondev, Kirill Korolev , Anatoli Polkovnikov, Sanchez Lab, David Schwab, Dries Sels, Segrè Lab, Anirvan Sengupta, Allyson Sgro, Ned Wingreen.

Videos of selected talks:

1. Randomness, Complexity, and the Biological Frontier, ICAM Week of Science (Dec, 2023): video

2. Towards a theory of microbial ecosystems, Imperial College Londoan Physics of Life Seminar (Dec, 2021): video

3. Statistical Physics and Machine Learning approaches to biological networks, HHMI Workshop:4D Cellular Physiology Reimagined: Theory as a Principal Component (Sep, 2021): video
   

4. Randomness, complexity, and the Biological Frontier, UCR Physics Colloquium (May, 2021): video
   

5. Broad MIA Talk on Microbiomes and Metabolism with Josh Goldford, Broad Institute: Models, Inference, and Algorithms seminar (Dec, 2020): video
   

6. Towards a Statistical Mechanics of Microbiomes, ICTP Workshop on Systems Biology and Molecular Economy of Microbial Communities (Dec, 2018): video
   

7. Towards a Statistical Mechanics of Microbiomes, PCTS Bridging Theory and Experiment in Microbial Communities (Dec, 2018): video
   

8. From Reinforcement Learning to Spin Glasses: The Many Surprises in Quantum State Preparation, PhysicsNext Workshop (Oct, 2018): video
   

9. Statistical physics approaches to community ecology, KITP (Aug, 2017): video
   

10. Energy, information, and computation in cells at the ICTS Winter school on quantiative biology (Dec.2015): Part 1,Part 2, Part 3
    

11. Adventures at the interface of physics and Biology, KITP (Jan 2015): video
    

12. Dictyostelium populations exploit noise to control collective behavior, BIRS Workshop on Stochasticity in Biochemical Reaction Networks, (Sept 2013): video
    

Publications:

To find out more about my research please look at my publications with links to pdf files.

Funding: