Prof. Iyer-Biswas receives Showalter Trust early faculty career grant

2018-10-05

Prof. Srividya Iyer-Biswas received a Showalter Trust grant for early career faculty members for 2018. The Ralph W. and Grace M. Showalter Research Trust has benefited Purdue researchers for more than 40 years through one-time grants to faculty in the areas of environmental science; biochemistry and molecular biology; disease prevention, diagnosis, progression, treatment and control; new technologies for food production, preservation, distribution and safety; and medical and biophysical instrumentation.

A biophysicist, Prof. Iyer-Biswas heads a research group focused on discovering the physical principles that govern single-cell behavior and transcend the details of specific biological systems.  She has previously received support from Purdue Research Foundation and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Project Details

Emergent Physical Laws Governing Stochastic Single-Cell Aging

Degenerative changes associated with aging processes are universally experienced by humans. Indeed, all living organisms age. Despite efforts in mitigating the deleterious effects of aging, fundamental questions about aging processes remain open. A key challenge in aging studies has been to identify clean experimental systems in which extrinsic (e.g., environmental) and intrinsic (e.g., genetic) factors contributing towards the aging of an organism can be precisely controlled. Consequently, even basic questions such as how “aging” should be defined remain open. Another challenge is that organisms from the same species with highly similar genomes age differently, even if they experience the same extrinsic factors: the aging process is an inherently probabilistic process.  In this project the Iyer-Biswas group will leverage an integrated framework of creative experimental and theoretical methods to overcome these challenges and answer fundamental questions about aging phenomena. Completion of the proposed research will facilitate better understanding and control of the aging process. Certain knowledge of the aging process will help improve human health and happiness, by enabling control of aging related factors. It remains to be seen whether this knowledge will also provide a route to reversing currently unavoidable aging in all organisms.

For more information:

Srividya Iyer-Biswas - http://www.physics.purdue.edu/people/faculty/siyerbis.php

2018 Showalter Trust Awards - https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/purduetoday/releases/2018/Q4/faculty-members-receive-showalter-funding.html