Learn as you go! How I went from Mathematics to Biology.

Monday May 8 at 4pm in Olin 201. An interdisciplinary approach only requires an open mind and a sprinkle of serendipity. This talk will be a brief overview of my journey through STEM and how I was able to approach biological problems by starting with faint recollections from my mathematics training. Each problem required me to learn new concepts in biology and relearn mathematics to solve a problem. In this talk I will discuss three vignettes on how I applied mathematics to solve a protein geometry problem, to simplify a complex network based on gene-to-gene relationships, and to determine the processes that underlie the decay of biological molecules. All three stories share a central theme: learn as you go and be open to ideas!


Bio: Matthew Tien is an Assistant Professor of Biology at Whitman College. His research interests center on finding novel gene-regulatory systems in bacteria and engineering microbes for bioremediation efforts. Matthew was an undergraduate at the University of Texas at Austin, earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the University of Chicago, and was a post-doctorate fellow at MIT. Outside of science, he is an avid outdoor climber, movie-nerd, and crossworder.

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