People: Arup K. Chakraborty

Bio

Arup K. Chakraborty  is one of the 12 Institute Professors at MIT, the highest rank awarded to a MIT faculty member, and holds the John M. Deutch Institute Professorship. He is also a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics, and Chemistry at MIT. He served as the founding Director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and he is a founding member of the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard. For almost 25 years now, Chakraborty’s work has largely focused on bringing together approaches from statistical physics, immunology, and virology. His interests span T cell signaling, development of the T cell repertoire, and a mechanistic understanding of virus evolution, antibody responses, and vaccine design. Since 2016, Chakraborty has also been interested in the role of phase separation in gene regulation. Chakraborty is one of less than 30 individuals who are members of all three branches of the US National Academies – National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, and National Academy of Engineering. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and has received many other honors including the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the E. O. Lawrence Medal (DOE), a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics from the American Physical Society, the Colburn, Professional Progress, Alpha Chi Sigma and Prausnitz Institute Lectureship from the AIChE, and three honorary doctorates. Chakraborty has received 7 awards for his classroom teaching and he is a co-author of the book “Viruses, Pandemics, & Immunity”. 

Research Interests

Infectious Diseases/Immunology/virology; Regulation of transcription; Condensate biology; Statistical Physics and computation

For over two decades, Chakraborty’s lab has focused on understanding the mechanistic underpinnings of the adaptive immune response to pathogens, and then to harness this knowledge to help design better vaccines and therapies. Current interests in immunology can be divided into three broad categories: understanding the network of biochemical interactions that enable T cells to translate engagement of membrane receptors to cognate ligands into functional responses, how T cell development results in T cells that are specific for unknown and emerging pathogens, and the human immune response to HIV, influenza, and coronaviruses. The goal of the last effort is to guide the rational design of vaccines and therapies against highly mutable infectious disease-causing viruses based on an understanding of the pertinent fundamental immunology and virology. Another recent focus is the role of phase separation in eukaryotic gene regulation. In particular, how droplets of transcriptional molecules form at specific genomic loci, and how their functions are regulated by non-equilibrium processes. Chakraborty’s work represents a crossroad of the physical and life sciences. A hallmark of Chakraborty’s research is the close synergy and collaboration between his lab’s theoretical and computational studies (rooted in statistical physics) and investigations led by experimental biologists and clinicians.