Angelika Amon is a professor of biology and studies the molecular mechanisms that prevent chromosome mis-segregation and hence aneuploidy in mitosis and meiosis.

Her laboratory also investigates the consequences for cell growth and division when the mechanisms that ensure accurate chromosome segregation fail.

Cell-cell recognition in immunology, T-cell biology and human immune response to HIV, membranes, statistical mechanics, computational immunology

Arup K. Chakraborty is the Robert T. Haslam Professor of Chemical Engineering, Chemistry and Biological Engineering at MIT and a founding member of the Ragon Institute of MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard.

After obtaining his PhD in chemical engineering at the University of Delaware and completing postdoctoral studies at the University of Minnesota, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in December 1988. He rose through the ranks, ultimately serving as the Warren and Katharine Schlinger Distinguished Professor and Chair of Chemical Engineering, Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biophysics at Berkeley. He was also head of theoretical and computational biology at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Chakraborty moved to MIT in September 2005. His research over the past 10 years has focused on developing and applying theoretical and computational approaches to studying the function of T lymphocytes, orchestrators of the adaptive immune response. A characteristic of his work is its impact on experimental immunology, and more recently, clinical studies (he collaborates extensively with leading immunologists). Chakraborty’s work at the interface of the physical, life and engineering sciences has been recognized with many honors, including an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the E. O. Lawrence Memorial Award for Life Sciences, the Allan P. Colburn and Professional Progress awards of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, a Miller Research Professorship, and a National Young Investigator Award. Chakraborty is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Charles L. Cooney received his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966, and his SM (1967) and PhD (1970) in biochemical engineering from MIT. After a short postdoc stint at the Squibb Institute for Medical Research, he joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor in 1970, becoming full professor in 1982.

Cooney’s honors include the 1989 Gold Medal of the Institute of Biotechnological Studies (London); the Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers; the James Van Lanen Distinguished Service Award from the American Chemical Society’s Division of Microbial and Biochemical Technology; and election to the American Institute of Medical and Biochemical Engineers and the Fellows of the American Chemical Society.

A consultant to multiple biotech and pharmaceutical companies, Cooney sits on the boards of Genzyme, Polypore International and Biocon Ltd. (India). His research and teaching span many aspects of biochemical engineering and pharmaceutical manufacturing. He holds more than 30 patents, has published 250-plus research papers, and has co-authored or edited five books, including Development of Sustainable Bioprocesses: Modeling and Assessment (Wiley Press, 2006).

Peter Dedon is the Underwood-Prescott Professor of Biological Engineering and Toxicology in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT and is also the Deputy Director of the MIT Center for Environmental Health Science.

Following graduation with a BA in chemistry from St. Olaf College in 1979, he obtained an MD and a PhD in pharmacology from the University of Rochester in 1987, and joined the toxicology faculty at MIT in 1991. Dedon's research program addresses the chemical biology linking bacterial infections, inflammation and human diseases such as cancer and atherosclerosis. His research group approaches these problems by developing ultra-sensitive chemical tools to characterize and quantify normal and damaged molecules in cells and tissues, with the goal developing of biomarkers of exposure, pathophysiology and disease risk.

Recent efforts involve developing tools to study the system of metabolic changes in human and bacterial cells exposed to the chemical mediators of inflammation produced by macrophages and neutrophils.

C. Forbes Dewey's research interests are reflected in the more than 150 peer-reviewed papers and patents and an equivalent number of invited talks and lectures. His current research interests are in the role of the glycocalyx in cell mechanotransduction in response to fluid shear stress and in the scalable computation of very large ensembles of biological pathways.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers paper, “The dynamic response of vascular endothelial cells to fluid shear stress,” J. Biomech. Eng. 1981; 103: 165-197, has been cited in 500-plus peer-reviewed references. He is on the editorial advisory board of Telemedicine and the IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, and is a frequent reviewer for the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and many of the leading technical journals in his fields. 

He is a founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, a fellow of the American Physical Society, an inaugural fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, and has been listed in “Who’s Who in America” for the past 25 years. He was recently elected as an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the U.K.

Lorna Gibson graduated in civil engineering from the University of Toronto in 1978 and obtained her PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1981. Between 1982 and 1984 she was an assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of British Columbia. In 1984, she moved to MIT, where she is currently the Matoula S. Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

Her research interests focus on the mechanics of materials with a cellular structure such as honeycombs and foams. Recent projects include the mechanics of fluid-filled open-cell foams for energy absorption; aerogels for thermal insulation; cellular materials in nature and in medicine; the mechanics of porous scaffolds for tissue engineering and the mechanical interactions of biological cells in tissue engineering scaffolds. 

She is the co-author of the books Cellular Solids: Structure and Properties, Metal Foams: A Design Guide and Cellular Materials in Nature and Medicine. At MIT, she has served as chair of the Committee on Women Faculty in the School of Engineering (1999 to 2001), chair of the Faculty (2005 to 2006) and as associate provost (2006 to 2008).

Jeff Gore's laboratory studies evolutionary dynamics by combining microbial experiments with ideas from physics, mathematics and economics.

As a Pappalardo Fellow in the department, he used approaches from game theory to understand how yeast cells cooperate to grow on the sugar sucrose, yielding insight into the conditions required for the evolution of cooperative behaviors.

Gore received his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, as a Hertz Fellow, where he developed new techniques to manipulate individual biological molecules such as DNA. Over the years, Gore’s biophysics research has appeared in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Alan Grodzinsky is currently the director of MIT's Center for Biomedical Engineering and is professor of biological, electrical, and mechanical engineering at MIT.

His research interests include the degeneration and repair of cartilage in injured and arthritic joints, cellular mechanotransduction, molecular nano-mechanics, tissue engineering, and the influence of physical forces on gene expression and matrix biosynthesis in musculoskeletal tissues. He has published more than 230 journal articles and reviews in these fields, and was elected founding fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

He is past chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Musculoskeletal Biology and Bioengineering, and past president of the Orthopaedic Research Society and the International Cartilage Repair Society. He has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research, Archives Biochemistry Biophysics, Polymer Networks and Gels, Arthritis and Rheumatism, and is now on the board of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. He received the NIH MERIT Award, the ASME Melville Medal, the Kappa Delta Research Prize of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the Borelli Award of the American Society of Biomechanics (ASB), and the Honorary Doctorate of the University of Montreal, and numerous other awards. He has been on the Science Advisory Boards of Smith and Nephew, ISTO Technologies, and Tissue Engineering Inc., and is a scientific co-founder of 3D-Matrix. He has been a consultant for 40-plus industrial and academic institutions.

Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli is assistant professor of biological engineering and mechanical engineering. Hamad-Schifferli's research includes the use of nanoparticles to manipulate biomolecules and biological processes, the biophysical effects of nanoparticles on proteins and DNA, and applications of nanoparticles in drug delivery and manipulating gene expression.