QBio/PEB Seminar Series

Join us for our weekly seminar series in collaboration with the QBio Institute! This series features a mixture of talks from Yale and external faculty speakers about the latest work from their lab. The last seminar of each month is a Discussion Group where two speakers (graduate students, postdocs, and faculty) get feedback on their latest work with the QBio/PEB community!

PEB and QBio trainees are invited to join speakers for lunch after their talk (email qbio@yale.edu to sign up). PEB graduate students can also host a Distinguished Speaker as part of this series (email peb@yale.edu for more informaiton about the nomination process).

Schedule

All talks are from 11AM-12PM unless otherwise noted. Email qbio@yale.edu for seminar location information. 

Fall 2026

Up Next:

November 5

Dr. Dmitry Krotov, CEO, Dynamical Mind

“Dense Associative Memory: physical systems for novel AI architectures”

Host: Dr. Michael Abbott and Dr. Ben Machta

November 13

Dr. Joerg Bewersdorf, Professor of Cell Biology and of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University

Title TBA

Host: Dr. Chris Lynn & Dr. Emma Carley

November 20

Dr. Tim Atherton, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University

Title TBA

Host: Allison Culbert

Student-hosted speaker

December 4

Dr. Harry McNamara, Assistant Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology and of Physics, Yale University

Title TBA

Host: Dr. Chris Lynn & Dr. Emma Carley

December 11

Discussion Group Seminar

Past Talks:

September 4, 3:00 PM

Dr. Robert Prevedel, Head of EMBL Imaging Centre, Group Leader and Senior Scientist, EMBL

“Advancing microscopy to explore life in context”

Host: Dr. Jacob Musser & Dr. Jing Yan

September 11

Dr. Martina dal Bello, Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University

“Nutrient availability shapes the diversity and stability of microbial communities”

Host: Dr. Chris Lynn & Dr. Emma Carley

September 15

Dr. Paul Wiggins, Associate Professor of Physics and of Bioengineering, University of Washington

“Protein overabundance is driven by growth robustness”

Host: Dr. Armita Nourmohammad

September 18

Dr. Ilya Nemenman, Professor of Physics and of Biology, Emory University

“Multiple time scales and hidden phenotypic states in type 2 diabetes”

Host: Dr. Chris Lynn

September 25

Discussion Group Seminar

October 16

Discussion Group Seminar

Past Talks

January 23

Dr. Corey O’Hern, Professor of Mechanical Engineering & Physics, Yale University

“Cell shape emerges from motion”

Host: Dr. Emma Carley & Dr. Chris Lynn

January 30

Discussion Group Seminar

February 6

Dr. Yuhai Tu, Senior Research Scientist, Center for Computational Biology & Center for Computational Neuroscience, Flatiron Institute

Title Nonequilibrium thermodynamics in living systems: Towards answering Schrödinger’s question

Host: Dr. Joe Howard

February 13

Dr. Megan King, Professor of Cell Biology & Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University 

Title The biophysics of chromosomes: from polymers to emergent properties and mechanotransduction 

Host: Dr. Emma Carley & Dr. Chris Lynn

February 20*

Dr. Jerelle Joseph, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Princeton University

Title: Understanding and engineering biomolecular condensates through simulation

Host: Arlind Kacirani

February 27

Discussion Group Seminar

March 27

Discussion Group Seminar

March 30

Dr. Stephanie Palmer, Associate Professor of Physics and of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago

Title: What to throw away? How brains make efficient codes

Host: Dr. Chris Lynn

April 17 

Dr. Simon Mochrie, Professor of Physics and Applied Physics, Yale University 

Title “Chromatin organization and dynamics in live cells”

Host: Dr. Emma Carley & Dr. Chris Lynn

April 24

Discussion Group Seminar

May 8

Dr. Jay Tang, Professor of Physics, Brown University

Title “Fluid or Solid?- Complex Physical States of Bacterial Swarms”

Hots: Dr. Jing Yan

May 15

Discussion Group Seminar

September 12

Dr. Aaron Kuan, Assistant Professor of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering, Yale University

“New Technologies for Functional, Multiscale and Molecular Connectomics”

Host: Aiyanna Doss

September 19

Dr. Min Wu, Associate Professor of Cell Biology, Yale University

“Information Processing on Immune Cell Surfaces”

Host: Dr. Emma Carley

September 26

Discussion Group Seminar

October 3

Dr. Jeff Gore, Professor of Physics, MIT

“Emergent dynamics of microbial communities”

Host: Dr. Jing Yan

October 10

Dr. Pavan Ramdya, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and Bioengineering, EPFL

“How flies learn to engage with objects and one another”

Host: Dr. Thierry Emonet

October 24

Dr. Brandon Ogbunu, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University

“Context x Everything Interactions: From Proteins to Pandemics and Beyond”

Host: Dr. Chris Lynn

October 31

Discussion Group Seminar

November 7

Dr. Sam Raredon, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology, Yale School of Medicine

“The Structure of Multicellular Communication in Tissues”

Host: Dr. Jing Yan

November 14

Discussion Group Seminar

December 5

Dr. John Bechhoefer, Professor of Physics, Simon Fraser University

“An Information Engine with High Performance and Efficiency”

Host: Dr. Thierry Emonet

December 12

Discussion Group Seminar