I apply mathematical thinking and modeling to discover mechanistic insights about diverse phenomena relevant to adaptive immunity. I have thus advanced the mechanistic understanding of, among others, the formation of T cell receptors via genetic recombination; the collapse of T cell diversity in the elderly; immune evasion by influenza viruses; the original antigenic sin; and hemagglutination-inhibition. Other topics of interest include theory-driven machine learning as an aid to inductive inference and prediction in biology and medicine; quantization of health; and phenotype accessibility in evolutionary landscapes. I also investigate translational applications of insights obtained from the basic scientific work.
I spent several years at Princeton University studying theoretical biology with Simon Levin, graduating with Master’s (Sep 2005 – Jun 2007) and PhD (Feb 2008 – Apr 2009) degrees. Before then, I had obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Biology from Morgan State University and then spent one and a half years doing independent research on RNA folding dynamics and other topics (e.g. see this paper) while developing commercial software as a hobby.
I am Professor of Theoretical Biology at AIMS, and the AIMS Network’s Research Director.