Research Area: Stem Cell and Developmental Biology

Department of Biology welcomes three new faculty members

Recent additions bring diverse expertise and cultural perspectives to research community.

Raleigh McElvery | Department of Biology
July 25, 2017

On July 1, MIT Department of Biology welcomed three new faculty members. Since they were all born outside the continental U.S., these newcomers add to the diversity of cultural experiences and contribute to the global face of science at MIT and its affiliated institutions around Kendall Square. The triad also enhances the department’s diverse array of research initiatives. Their interests are as far-reaching as their roots, and range from investigating genetic diseases and cancer immunotherapy to exploiting parasite vulnerabilities.

“When creative individuals with distinct perspectives and approaches come together in an innovative environment like MIT, the possibilities for scientific collaboration and accomplishment are exceptional,” says Alan Grossman, head of the department. “I couldn’t be more pleased to welcome three such outstanding and accomplished individuals into our research community.”

Eliezer Calo

Eliezer Calo is no stranger to MIT. Although he grew up on a farm more than a thousand miles away in the mountains of Carolina, Puerto Rico, Calo first set foot in MIT’s Building 68 11 years ago — and hasn’t wavered in his decision to become a biologist since. In 2006, as part of the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP), Calo spent 10 weeks studying under Professor Stephen Bell, examining DNA replication. At the time, Calo was a chemistry major at the University of Puerto Rico, but returned post-graduation to MIT’s Department of Biology, earning his PhD while serving as both a teaching assistant for MIT’s course 7.01 (Introduction to Biology) and MSRP program assistant.

“MIT is very unique,” he says. “I’ve done research at multiple institutions, and yet nothing quite compares. Here, the impossible is made possible.”

After completing his postdoctoral training at Stanford University, Calo returned to Cambridge, Massachusetts, this past January as an assistant professor and extramural member at the Koch Institute to head his own lab — exploring the ways in which errors in cellular organelles called ribosomes can lead to disease.

Ribosomes are vital to the translation of genetic code into the molecules integral to life, but are far less often acknowledged for their role in embryonic development. Calo suggests that when ribosomes are not constructed correctly, they are unable to carry out their cellular duties, hindering cell growth and causing developmental disorders. Calo is interested in one condition specifically: Treacher Collins syndrome, which stems from a mutation in a single gene that impedes proper ribosomal assembly. He will soon transfer his experiments from cell cultures to a new model system — zebrafish — in order to further unravel the relationship between ribosome structure and disease.

“The research I do now is purely based on my interest in understanding how cells work,” Calo says. “Specifically, how the mechanisms controlling growth and proliferation operate. These are essential processes that led to the emergence of multicellular organisms, and thus to our own existence.”

Stefani Spranger

One building over in MIT’s Koch Institute, newly-appointed Assistant Professor Stefani Spranger will work to harness the body’s own defense force to pinpoint and eradicate cancer. Spranger carried her passion for immunotherapy across seas from Munich, Germany. As the daughter of two engineers, Spranger was raised on science. “My parents fostered my curiosity,” she says, “which led to my initial motivation to go into science: to figure out how things work.”

While earning her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Spranger discussed publications focusing on two clinical trials that used engineered immune cells to combat malignant melanoma. These publications ignited Spranger’s enthusiasm for immune-based therapies, which in turn spurred her doctoral and postdoctoral training at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Munich in the Institute for Molecular Immunology and the University of Chicago, respectively.

While Spranger’s education helped hone her immunology research skills, she is excited to experience a more varied academic environment encompassing a range of disciplines. “I was drawn to MIT because of its diverse faculty and the breadth of research interests,” she says.

Spranger’s lab will employ tumor models in mice to determine how cancer and immune cells interact. In particular, she aims to discern the many factors related to the cells, tissues, and environment that could affect the immune system’s anti-tumor response. Ultimately, Spranger hopes to contribute to new treatments that trigger the body’s defense to thwart cancer.

Sebastian Lourido

Trained as both an artist and a scientist, Sebastian Lourido works to counter an entirely different kind of invader spreading biological mayhem: parasites. Originally from Colombia, he was recently named assistant professor of biology, joining the cohort of 15 faculty members at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research — one of just 28 individuals to ever receive this appointment. The title may be new, but this is familiar turf for Lourido. He became a Whitehead Fellow in 2012, after receiving his PhD in microbiology from Washington University in St. Louis and a bachelor’s in studio art and cell and molecular biology from Tulane University. A pioneer in more ways than one, Lourido formed his own lab as a fellow rather than following a more conventional postdoc path.

Lourido spent much of his childhood exploring his mother’s genetics lab, where he analyzed practically anything he could fit under a microscope. “That experience solidified my excitement for the invisible mechanisms that make up the living world,” he says. “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that genetic information was carried in our cells in the form of DNA, and passed from one generation to the next.”

Constantly seeking ways to merge his artistic endeavors with scientific ones, Lourido leverages his creativity to glean insight into the systems and structures that constitute life.  He probes a group of microscopic invaders known as Apicomplexan parasites, revealing their weaknesses in order to devise potential treatments. Lourido’s team was the first to perform a genome-wide functional analysis of an apicomplexan — gaining deeper understanding of the genes and molecules key for the invasion process. In 2013, Lourido received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s Early Independence Award, and with it a five-year grant to investigate motility in one kind of parasite, Toxoplasma gondii. This same interloper is also the subject of Lourido’s two-year NIH-funded project, for which he is the principal investigator.

Lourido has found the MIT community both welcoming and inclusive. Even as he was interviewing for his new position, he was struck by the collaborative, collegial, and nurturing environment.

“This level of engagement permeates the other elements of our community — students, postdocs, and staff scientists — who drive the exciting research happening every day at MIT,” he says. “There are many forces that shape the diversity of our campus, and we need to be vigilant and work hard to continue to encourage and support scientists from different backgrounds, experiences, and cultures.”

School of Science professors granted tenure

Seven award-winning faculty members represent the departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.

Bendta Schroeder | School of Science
June 28, 2017

The School of Science has announced that seven of its faculty members have been granted tenure by MIT.

This year’s newly-tenured professors are:

Mircea Dincă, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, addresses research challenges related to the storage and consumption of energy and global environmental concerns through the synthesis and characterization of new inorganic and organic materials. His work has applications in heterogeneous catalysis, energy conversion and storage, chemical sensing, gas separation, and water-based technologies including adsorption heat pumps and water production and purification. By designing and synthesizing new materials, Dincă aims to learn more about fundamental processes such as electron and ion transport through ordered solids, the reactivity and electrochemistry of low-coordinate metal ions in porous crystals, the effects of conformational changes on the electronic properties of molecules, and the behavior of materials at the interface with solid-state devices.

Dincă earned a BS in chemistry at Princeton University and a PhD in inorganic chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. Following a postdoc appointment at MIT in the Department of Chemistry, he joined its faculty in 2010. Among Dincă’s awards and honors are an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and the Alan T. Waterman Award

Liang Fu, the Lawrence C. (1944) and Sarah W. Biedenharn Career Development Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, is interested in novel topological phases of matter and their experimental realizations. He works on the theory of topological insulators and topological superconductors, with a focus on predicting and proposing their material realizations and experimental signatures. He is also interested in potential applications of topological materials, ranging from tunable electronics and spintronics, to quantum computation.

Fu obtained a BS in physics from the University of Science and Technology of China and a PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania. Following an appointment as a Junior Fellow at Harvard University, he joined the MIT faculty in 2012. Fu is the recipient of a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and the New Horizons in Physics Prize.

Jeff Gore, associate professor in the Department of Physics, uses experimentally-tractable microcosms such as bacterial communities to explore the physics of complex living systems, examining how interactions between individuals drives the evolution and ecology of communities. Gore’s primary areas of research include the behavior of populations near tipping points that lead to collapse, the evolution of cooperative behaviors within a species or community, and the determining factors for multi-species diversity within a community.

Gore received a BS in physics, mathematics, economics, and electrical engineering from MIT and a PhD in physics from the University of California at Berkeley. He returned to MIT as a Pappalardo Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics and subsequently joined the faculty in 2010. Gore’s awards and honors include an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, an NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, and a National Science Foundtion CAREER Award.

Jeremiah Johnson, the Firmenich Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, designs macromolecules and their syntheses to address problems in chemistry, medicine, biology, energy, and polymer physics. Johnson works with a range of materials and applications, including nano-scale, brush-arm star polymer architectures for in vivo drug delivery, imaging, and self-assembly; hydrogels for the analysis of how molecular network defects impact mechanics; and polymers for surface functionalization and energy storage.

Johnson completed a BS in biomedical engineering and chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis and a PhD in chemistry at Columbia University. Following an appointment as a Beckman Institute Postdoctoral Scholar at the Caltech, Johnson joined the MIT faculty in 2011. Johnson is the recipient of several awards including an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award.

Brad Pentelute, the Pfizer-Laubach Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry, modifies naturally occurring proteins to enhance their therapeutic properties for human medicine, focusing on the use of cysteine arylation to generate abiotic macromolecular proteins, the precision delivery of biomolecules into cells, and the development of fast flow platforms to rapidly produce polypeptides.

Pentelute earned a BS in chemistry and a BA in psychology at the University of Southern California, followed by a PhD in organic chemistry at the University of Chicago. After a postdoc fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Pentelute joined the MIT faculty in 2011. His awards and honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Novartis Early Career Award, and an Amgen Young Investigator Award.

Jesse Thaler, associate professor of physics and member of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, is a theoretical particle physicist whose research focus is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN. Thaler aims to maximize the discovery potential of the LHC by applying theoretical insights from quantum field theory. He is particularly interested in novel methods to test the properties of dark matter at the LHC and beyond, as well as the theoretical structures and experimental signatures of supersymmetry. Thaler also develops new methods to characterize jets, which are collimated sprays of particles that are copiously produced at the LHC. These techniques exploit the substructure of jets to enhance the search for new physics as well as to illuminate the structure of the standard model itself.

Thaler received his PhD in physics from Harvard University and his BS in mathematics and physics from Brown University. After a fellowship at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California at Berkeley, he joined the MIT faculty in the Department of Physics in 2010. His awards and honors include an Early Career Research Award from the U.S. Department of Energy, a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and an MIT Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.

Matthew Vander Heiden is the Eisen and Chang Career Development Associate Professor in the Department of Biology. His laboratory is studying how mammalian cell metabolism is adapted to support function, with a particular focus on the role metabolism plays in cancer. He uses mouse models to study how changes in metabolism impact all aspects of cancer progression with a goal of finding novel ways to exploit altered metabolism to help patients.

Vander Heiden earned a BS, an MD, and a PhD from the University of Chicago, and completed his clinical training in internal medicine and medical oncology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. After postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School, Vander Heiden joined the faculty of the MIT Department of Biology and the Koch Institute in 2010. Among Vander Heiden’s awards and honors include a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Sciences, a Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, a Stand Up To Cancer Innovative Research Grant, and being named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholar.

From MSRP student to MIT professor
Justin Chen
March 13, 2017

The biology department welcomes Eliezer Calo back to MIT

By Justin Chen

 

As the newest faculty member of the MIT biology department, Eliezer Calo is working in Building 68, the same building where he was first inspired to become a scientist. Professor Calo’s relationship with MIT began eleven years ago when he was a chemistry major at the University of Puerto Rico with hazy career aspirations. Encouraged by his instructors to attend a Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) conference, Calo came across a booth advertising the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP). Even though Calo initially associated MIT with engineering and math, he applied for and received a summer internship position in Professor Stephen Bell’s lab studying DNA replication. “Experiencing the scope of MIT’s biological research and seeing how collaborative and enthusiastic people were about biology was eye opening,” Calo says. “That was the summer I decided to do a PhD.”

MSRP launched Calo’s scientific career and cemented his love for MIT. After graduating from the University of Puerto Rico, he returned to MIT’s biology department for graduate school and earned a PhD under the mentorship of Professor Jackie Lees. He then moved to Stanford University for postdoctoral training with Professor Joanna Wysocka. He began his faculty position at MIT in January and became an extramural member of the Koch Institute in March.

“We are thrilled to welcome Eliezer back to MIT as a faculty member,” says Biology Department head Alan Grossman. “He and the two other new faculty members, Professors Stefani Spranger and Sebastian Lourido, exemplify the energy and cutting edge research in the department. We eagerly anticipate many years of exciting discoveries from their labs.”

Now leading his own lab, Calo seeks to understand how cells assemble ribosomes and the roles they play in development and in disease. Ribosomes, intricate molecular machines, create building blocks of the body by translating the genome into proteins.  In order to sustain growth, human cells assemble millions of ribosomes. When defects in ribosome assembly occur during embryonic development, cells are unable to grow and divide, leading to developmental disorders.

One such disorder is Treacher Collins syndrome, which arises from a genetic alteration that impairs the expression of a gene named Treacle,whose protein product assists in ribosome assembly.  Surprisingly, although Treacle is expressed in most cells during early embryo development, the mutation affects only the nascent face: individuals have smaller facial bones making up their cheeks and jaws.

“Treacher Collins and other syndromes caused by abnormal ribosome assembly and function challenge our understanding of the ribosome,” Calo explains. “We think of ribosomes as constitutively expressed molecular machines required only for protein synthesis. These diseases, however, suggest that ribosomes might unexpectedly have very specific developmental roles as well.”

Describing how a single genetic mutation warps cell biology and triggers disease is a difficult task. In the case of Treacher Collins Syndrome, the precise mechanism remains unknown but scientists have identified two potential factors.  First, cells destined to become facial bones grow quickly during development and may be especially sensitive to reduced protein production. Second, new research suggests that Treacher Collins may also be caused by defective ribosomes activating cancer suppressor pathways, leading to slower cell division and cell death.

To design a simplified model of Treacher Collins syndrome, Calo has used CRISPR gene editing technology to introduce disease-relevant mutations into human embryonic stem cells in culture. The cells are then grown and differentiated into the specific facial tissues affected by Treacher Collins syndrome. These in vitro cell communities allow Calo to closely observe abnormalities as they arise during development and better understand how decreased protein levels, tumor suppressor pathways, or other factors yet to be discovered contribute to cell death.

To determine whether the results in cultured cells apply to whole organisms, Calo plans to validate his findings in zebrafish. Mutant zebrafish, like humans, have craniofacial defects and allow researchers to screen chemicals that may lessen facial anomalies. By working with human embryonic stem cells in culture and then testing the findings in zebrafish, Calo has created a powerful two-pronged approach to understand Treacher Collins and address fundamental questions of ribosome biology and disease.

As Calo establishes his new laboratory, he is also reprising a familiar role of instructor and mentor. While performing graduate research, he served as a teaching assistant for MIT’s introductory biology course (7.01) and as a program assistant for MSRP. Calo, who still runs into former students in New York, Boston, and Stanford, enjoys learning about their accomplishments and future goals. Now a professor, Calo will inspire the next generation of biologists by advising graduate students and MSRP researchers. “My MSRP experience shaped the course of my scientific career, so I look forward to having MSRP students working in my lab,” Calo says. “I want them to experience what it is like to do research at MIT.”

Posted: 12.5.17