Alexander van Oudenaarden (MIT)

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Alexander van Oudenaarden
Born March 19, 1970 (1970-03-19) (age 38)
Zuidland, The Netherlands
Residence U.S.A.
Citizenship The Netherlands
Fields Biophysics,Systems biology,Synthetic biology
Institutions MIT
Alma mater Delft University of Technology(M.S.,M.S.,Ph.D.)

Alexander van Oudenaarden (March 19, 1970) is a Dutch biophysicist and systems biologist at MIT. He is a leading researcher in systems biology and synthetic biology, specializing in stochasticity in gene networks and actin dynamics.

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[edit] Biography

Alexander van Oudenaarden was born March 19th, 1970, in Zuidland, a small town in the Dutch province of South Holland. He studied at the Delft University of Technology, where he obtained a Masters of Science in Materials Science and Engineering (cum laude) and a Masters of Science in Physics in 1993, and a Ph.D. in Physics (cum laude) in 1998 in experimental condensed matter physics, under the supervision of Prof. J.E. Mooij. He received the Andries Miedema Award (best Ph.D.-research in the field of condensed matter physics in the Netherlands) for his thesis on "Quantum vortices and quantum interference effects in circuits of small tunnel junctions". In 1998 he moved to Stanford, where he was a postdoctoral researcher in the departments of Biochemistry and of Microbiology & Immunology, working on force generation of polymerizing actin filaments in the Theriot lab and a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Chemistry, working on Micropatterning of supported phospholipid bilayers in the Boxer lab. In 2000 he joined the department of Physics at MIT as an assistant professor, was tenured in 2004 and is now a full professor. In 2001 he received the NSF CAREER award, and was both an Alfred Sloan Research Fellow and the Keck Career Development Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering. He is married with one child.

[edit] Work

His lab started with parallel lines of research in actin dynamics [1][2] and noise in gene networks [3][4][5] , and his current efforts are focused on stochasticity in gene networks [6][7][8][9] biological networks as control systems [10][11][12], and the evolution of small networks. His lab has been developing tools based on synthetic biology to experimentally probe networks in novel ways, laying down the groundwork for a theoretical understanding of stochasticity in gene networks, and determining the effects of phenotypic variability as a survival strategy[13].

[edit] References

  1. ^ Upadhyaya, A; J. R. Chabot, A. Andreeva, A. Samadani and A. van Oudenaarden (2003). "Probing polymerization forces by using actin-propelled lipid vesicles". PNAS USA 100: 4521. 
  2. ^ Upadhyaya, A; A. van Oudenaarden (2003). "Biomimetic systems for studying actin-based motility". Current Biology 13: R734. 
  3. ^ Thattai, M; A. van Oudenaarden (2001). "Intrinsic noise in gene regulatory networks". PNAS USA 98: 8614. 
  4. ^ Ozbudak, E; M. Thattai, I. Kurtser, A. D. Grossman and A.van Oudenaarden (2002). "Regulation of noise in the expression of a single gene". Nature Genetics 31: 69. 
  5. ^ Thattai, M; A. van Oudenaarden (2002). "Attenuation of noise in ultrasensitive signaling cascades". Biophysical Journal 82: 2943. 
  6. ^ Pedraza, J M; A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "Noise propagation in gene networks". Science 307: 1965. 
  7. ^ Becskei, A; B. B. Kaufmann, and A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "Contributions of low molecule number and chromosomal positioning to stochastic gene expression". Nature Genetics 37: 937. 
  8. ^ Acar, M; A. Becskei, and A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "Enhancement of cellular memory by reducing stochastic transitions". Nature 435: 228. 
  9. ^ Chabot, J R; J. M. Pedraza, P. Luitel, and A. van Oudenaarden (2007). "Stochastic gene expression out-of-steady-state in the cyanobacterial circadian clock". Nature 450: 1249. 
  10. ^ Thattai, M; A. Becskei, and A. van Oudenaarden (2005). "A system of counteracting feedback loops regulates Cdc42p actvity during spontaneous cell polarization". Developmental Cell 9: 565. 
  11. ^ Tsang, J; J. Zhu, and A. van Oudenaarden (2007). "MicroRNA-mediated feedback and feedforward loops are recurrent network motifs in mammals". Molecular Cell 26: 753. 
  12. ^ Mettetal, J; D. Muzzey, C. Gomez-Uribe, and A. van Oudenaarden (2008). "The frequency dependence of osmo-adaptation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae". Science 319: 482. 
  13. ^ Acar, M; J. T. Mettetal, and A. van Oudenaarden (2008). "Stochastic switching as a survival strategy in fluctuating environments". Nature Genetics 40: 471. 

[edit] External links


Persondata
NAME van Oudenaarden, Alexander
ALTERNATIVE NAMES vanOudenaarden, Alex
SHORT DESCRIPTION professor, biophysics
DATE OF BIRTH March 19, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH Zuidland, The Netherlands
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH
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