BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Memento EPFL//
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Life Sciences Seminar: James Sharpe
DTSTART:20260211T140000
DTEND:20260211T150000
DTSTAMP:20260413T105957Z
UID:4fca7d403f10417bf977f0bf06a8fb3b5520f391a0e787f954c05bb2
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:James Sharpe\nTitle: Putting it all together: Building a 4D mu
 ltiscale model of limb development\n\nAbstract:\nLimb development is a par
 adigm model system for understanding organogenesis. The rapid development 
 of cutting-edge technologies over the past decade for omics and imaging pr
 ovides us with a huge amount of data. But a true understanding of complex 
 biological systems\, will require mathematical models which seek not just 
 to represent and predict\, but also to understand the underlying dynamical
  behaviours over time - in other words to explore mechanistic hypotheses. 
 I will explain some of our work both describing and explaining limb develo
 pment through computer modelling. In particular\, we aim\, ultimately\, to
  go beyond the individual mechanistic models of sub-parts of the problem (
 regionalisation\, symmetry-breaking\, shape control) and to integrate thes
 e into a more complete multi-scale model to understand how these basic mod
 ules interact and feedback on each other to create the overall layout (or 
 “bauplan”) of the vertebrate limb.\n\nBio:\nJames Sharpe was originall
 y captivated by computer programming\, but upon learning about the digital
  nature of the genetic code\, chose to study Biology for his undergraduate
  degree at Oxford University (1988-1991). He then pursued a PhD on the gen
 etic control of embryo development at NIMR\, London (1992-1997) with Robb 
 Krumlauf\, and in parallel started developing computer simulations of mult
 icellular development. After a short postdoc in Santiago\, Chile\, with Ro
 berto Mayor\, he moved to Edinburgh to focus on building a computer model 
 of the dynamics of limb development\, with Duncan Davidson. During this po
 stdoc he invented a new optical imaging technology called Optical Projecti
 on Tomography (OPT)\, which is dedicated to imaging tissues and organs tha
 t are too large for normal microscopy. In 2006 he moved to Barcelona\, bec
 oming a Senior Group Leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation\, and lat
 er becoming the coordinator of the CRG’s Systems Biology Program. His gr
 oup focused on systems biology approaches to modelling limb development 
 – combining lab experimentation with computer modelling. With this inter
 disciplinary approach the group demonstrated that the signalling proteins 
 which pattern the fingers during embryogenesis\, act as a Turing reaction-
 diffusion system. In 2017 he left the CRG\, and became the Head of the new
  EMBL Unit in Barcelona\, which focuses on Tissue Biology and Disease Mode
 lling. There his research continues to focus on computer modelling of vari
 ous examples of multicellular organisation\, from a multi-scale perspectiv
 e – from the molecular\, through the cellular to the organ level – but
  still focusing primarily on limb development.
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717
STATUS:CONFIRMED
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR