Professor Wendell Lim

Talk: Generative Biology - Learning to Program Cellular Machines and Systems

Abstract to follow.

About this speaker

Wendell Lim is the Byers Distinguished Professor of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of California, San Francisco, and the Director of the UCSF Cell Design Institute and the UCSF NCI Center for Synthetic Immunology.

He received his AB in Chemistry, summa cum laude, from Harvard College, his PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and completed his postdoctoral training at Yale University.

His research focuses on the design principles of molecular circuits that govern cell decision-making and responses. His lab has made significant contributions to understanding the molecular machinery of cell signaling and how molecular modules have been used in evolution to build novel behaviours.

More recently, he has been a pioneer in the emerging field of synthetic biology, exploring how these design principles can be harnessed to engineer living cells with precision therapeutic response programs against diseases such as cancer, autoimmunity, neuroinflammation, and degeneration. He was the founder of one of the first synthetic biology cell therapy companies, Cell Design Labs, and is the author of the textbook Cell Signaling: Principles and Mechanisms.