Padmini Rangamani, UC San Diego
Meet: https://meet.google.com/niy-gtpk-sro
YouTube Stream: https://youtube.com/live/xYLec_VIR2A?feature
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Abstract:
Synaptic plasticity is a process by which neuronal synapses update their weight. This process is associated with learning and memory formation. Morphological characterization of synapses have revealed that dendritic spines, the postsynaptic portions of neurons come in a variety of sizes and shapes. Additionally, neurons have fairly complex shapes for both the plasma membrane and the intracellular organelles. How important are these geometries for determining cellular function? And how can we use these geometries for physical simulations? In this talk, I will share a few computational tools developed in my group to use the high resolution electron micrographs to simulate cellular processes and generate experimentally testable predictions.
Bio:
Padmini Rangamani is a Professor and Jacobs Faculty Scholar in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. She joined the department as an Assistant Professor in July 2014. Earlier, she was a UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, where she worked on lipid bilayer mechanics. She obtained her Ph.D. in biological sciences from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. She received her B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Osmania University (Hyderabad, India) and Georgia Institute of Technology respectively. She is the recipient of the PECASE, ARO, AFOSR, and ONR Young Investigator Awards, and a Sloan Research Fellowship for Computational and Molecular Evolutionary Biology. She is also the lead PI for a MURI award on Bioinspired low energy information processing from the AFOSR. She was recently elected as a fellow of the American Institute for Biological and Medical Engineers.