Gene-Wei Li and Michael Birnbaum named Pew Innovation Fund investigators
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Gene-Wei Li and Michael Birnbaum named Pew Innovation Fund investigators
MIT professors Gene-Wei Li and Michael Birnbaum are among the 12 researchers named 2023 Innovation Fund investigators by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
Six pairs of scientists — alumni or advisors of Pew’s biomedical programs in the United States and Latin America — will partner on interdisciplinary research in human biology and disease.
A biophysicist, Gene-Wei Li, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Biology, studies how bacteria optimize the levels of proteins they produce at both mechanistic and systems levels. His lab focuses on design principles of transcription, translation, and RNA maturation. Li and his collaborator Katsuhiko Murakami, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Pennsylvania State University, will explore the complex genetics of cyanobacteria.
The pair will look at transcription termination, a key step in cyanobacteria gene regulation that tells the cell when to stop converting genetic information from DNA to RNA. While the mechanisms behind transcription termination are well known in other organisms, the inner workings of this process in cyanobacteria are still largely unknown. Drawing on Murakami’s expertise in structural biology and Li’s knowledge of transcription regulation, the two investigators will establish a model for microbial transcriptional termination in cyanobacteria. This work could unveil new scientific approaches used to study cyanobacteria, photosynthesis-promoting plant cells, and other bacterial groups.
Birnbaum, Class of 1956 Career Development Professor, associate professor of biological engineering, and faculty member at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, works on understanding and manipulating immune recognition in cancer and infections. By using a variety of techniques to study the antigen recognition of T cells, he and his team aim to develop the next generation of immunotherapies.
In the case of people with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a bacterium alerts the body’s disease-fighting T cells and triggers an inflammatory response characterized by abdominal pain and persistent diarrhea. IBD affects millions of people in the United States, and cases are on the rise in older adults, yet the cause of this autoimmune disorder is largely unknown.
Dan Littman, a professor of molecular immunology at New York University, and Birnbaum are looking for IBD’s root cause. The pair will merge Littman’s work exploring how and why specific bacteria affect T cell development with Birnbaum’s expertise in T cell receptor-antigen binding in an effort to characterize the specific microbes and antigens that drive these harmful responses in the gut. Together, their work could offer new treatment avenues for IBD, such as novel therapies targeting pathogenic microbes or T cells.
In 2018, Birnbaum was also named a Pew-Steward Scholar for Cancer Research.
“An interdisciplinary approach to research is critical to uncovering scientific breakthroughs and making lasting change,” says Donna Frisby-Greenwood, senior vice president for Philadelphia and scientific advancement at The Pew Charitable Trusts. “Pew is thrilled to support this exceptional group of investigators, whose collective efforts will help move the needle in important areas of health and medicine.”
The Pew Charitable Trusts has supported more than 1,000 early-career scientists spearheading high-risk, high-reward research across a variety of disciplines. In 2017, Pew launched the Innovation Fund to spark scientific collaboration among alumni of its biomedical programs in the United States and Latin America.
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in honor of that anon who said jews have done nothing for the world, here’s a non exhaustive list of things we’ve done for the world:
arts, fashion, and lifestyle:
jeans - levi strauss
modern bras - ida rosenthal
sewing machines - isaac merritt singer
modern film industry - carl laemmle (universal pictures), adolph zukor (paramount pictures), william fox (fox film forporation), louis b. mayer (mgm - metro-goldwyn-mayer), harry, sam, albert, and jack warners (warner bros.), steven spielberg, mel brooks, marx brothers
operetta - jacques offenbach
comic books - stan lee
graphic novels - will eisner
teddy bears - morris and rose michtom
influential musicians - irving berlin, stephen sondheim, benny goodman, george gershwin, paul simon, itzhak perlman, leonard bernstein, bob dylan, leonard cohen
artists - mark rothko
actors - elizabeth taylor, jerry lewis, barbara streisand
comedians - lenny bruce, joan rivers, jerry seinfeld
authors - judy blume, tony kushner, allen ginsberg, walter mosley
culture:
esperanto - ludwik lazar zamenhof
feminism - betty friedan, gloria steinem, ruth bader ginsberg
queer and trans rights - larry kramer, harvey milk, leslie feinberg, abby stein, kate bornstein, frank kameny, judith butler
international women's day - clara zetkin
principles of journalizm, statue of liberty, and pulitzer prize - joseph pulitzer
"the new colossus" - emma lazarus
universal declaration of human rights - rene samuel cassin
holocaust remembrance and human rights activism - elie wiesel
workers rights - louis brandeis, rose schneiderman
public health care, women's rights, and children's rights - lillian wald
racial equity - rabbi abraham joshua heschel, julius rosenwald, andrew goodman, michael schwerner
political theory - hannah arendt
disability rights - judith heumann
black lives matter slogan and movement - alicia garza
#metoo movement - jodi kantor
institute of sexology - magnus hirschfeld
technology:
word processing computers - evelyn berezin
facebook - mark zuckerberg
console video game system - ralph henry baer
cell phones - amos edward joel jr., martin cooper
3d - leonard lipton
telephone - philipp reis
fax machines - arthur korn
microphone - emile berliner
gramophone - emile berliner
television - boris rosing
barcodes - norman joseph woodland and bernard silver
secret communication system, which is the foundation of the technology used for wifi - hedy lamarr
three laws of robotics - isaac asimov
cybernetics - norbert wiener
helicopters - emile berliner
BASIC (programming language) - john george kemeny
google - sergey mikhaylovich brin and larry page
VCR - jerome lemelson
fax machine - jerome lemelson
telegraph - samuel finley breese morse
morse code - samuel finley breese morse
bulletproof glass - edouard benedictus
electric motor and electroplating - boris semyonovich jacobi
nuclear powered submarine - hyman george rickover
the internet - paul baran
icq instant messenger - arik vardi, yair goldfinger,, sefi vigiser, amnon amir
color photography - leopold godowsky and leopold mannes
world's first computer - herman goldstine
modern computer architecture - john von neumann
bittorrent - bram cohen
voip internet telephony - alon cohen
data archiving - phil katz, eugene roshal, abraham lempel, jacob ziv
nemeth code - abraham nemeth
holography - dennis gabor
laser - theodor maiman
instant photo sharing online - philippe kahn
first automobile - siegfried samuel marcus
electrical maglev road - boris petrovich weinberg
drip irrigation - simcha blass
ballpoint pen and automatic gearbox - laszlo biro
photo booth - anatol marco josepho
medicine:
pacemakers and defibrillators - louise robinovitch
defibrillators - bernard lown
anti-plague and anti-cholera vaccines - vladimir aronovich khavkin
polio vaccine - jonas salk
test for diagnosis of syphilis - august paul von wasserman
test for typhoid fever - ferdinand widal
penicillin - ernst boris chain
pregnancy test - barnhard zondek
antiretroviral drug to treat aids and fight rejection in organ transplants - gertrude elion
discovery of hepatitis c virus - harvey alter
chemotherapy - paul ehrlich
discovery of prions - stanley prusiner
psychoanalysis - sigmund freud
rubber condoms - julius fromm
birth control pill - gregory goodwin pincus
asorbic acid (vitamin c) - tadeusz reichstein
blood groups and rh blood factor - karl landsteiner
acyclovir (treatment for infections caused by herpes virus) - gertrude elion
vitamins - caismir funk
technique for measuring blood insulin levils - rosalyn sussman yalow
antigen for hepatitus - baruch samuel blumberg
a bone fusion technique - gavriil abramovich ilizarov
homeopathy - christian friedrich samuel hahnemann
aspirin - arthur ernst eichengrun
science:
theory of relativity - albert einstein
theory of the electromagnetic field - james maxwell
quantum mechanics - max born, gustav ludwig hertz
quantum theory of gravity - matvei bronstein
microbiology - ferdinand julius cohn
neuropsychology - alexander romanovich luria
counters for x-rays and gamma rays - robert hofstadter
genetic engineering - paul berg
discovery of the antiproton - emilio gino segre
discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation - arno allan penzias
discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe - adam riess and saul merlmutter
discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity - roger penrose
discovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of the milky way - andrea ghez
modern cosmology and the big bang theory - alexander alexandrovich friedmann
stainless steel - hans goldschmidt
gas powered vehicles
interferometer - albert abraham michelson
discovery of the source of energy production in stars - hans albrecht bethe
proved poincare conjecture - grigori yakovlevich perelman
biochemistry - otto fritz meyerhof
electron-positron collider - bruno touschek
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More thoughts on Alastor and why I don't think he's actually outdated:
I totally understand why many thoughts are going in the direction of him disliking Vox and TV as a whole because it is the technology that more or less replaced radio in the public eye, but I also think that we (so far, as of episode 4) have never really been given any evidence that he dislikes TV on principle rather than because he dislikes Vox and Vox is TV. Like, yes, he maintains a very dated aesthetic and does things like call TV "picture shows."
But also.
He throws around phrases like, "And now he's pissy, that's the tea!" and speaks with a permanent transatlantic accent (commonly used for TV and radio during his era but not actually naturally-occuring) at literally all times. This guy is not clueless - he's putting on airs. He knows modern lingo and he uses it comfortably and naturally.
There's a fanfic that, to save my life, I cannot remember the name of, where Angel Dust asks Alastor something to the tune of, "So what I'm getting out of this conversation is that you know it's called a cell phone and you just talk like you've never seen one on purpose?" and Alastor responds with, "Naturally!" that I think hit the nail on the head.
Especially when Alastor's anachronisms are so pointed. He calls Vox's TV show a "video podcast," which, 1) a podcast is a pretty modern term for him to know, originating at some point in the early 2000s and 2) deliberately reframes Vox's entire thing in terms of an audio format. It's not television. It's a podcast (a form of audio media that originated in the desire to download online radio broadcasts) with some video tacked on, he guesses.
Anyway, the tl;dr is that while I'm sure Alastor prefers his own era, I don't think Alastor is actually outdated, I think he's being fucking annoying on purpose.
Look at him. Look at his smug knifecat face. Bastardous. I love him.
ETA: The fanfic I mentioned is Anguish of the Marrow!
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