CCB Colloquium: Alex Mogilner (New York University): Understanding Mitotic Spindle Assembly in Prometaphase

Wednesday Feb 12, 2020, 11:30 AM → 12:30 PM America/New_York

7th Floor Classroom (Flatiron)

Presenter: Alex Mogilner, Ph.D., Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences - New York University


Title:  Understanding mitotic spindle assembly in prometaphase

I will start by showing a few slides on current projects in my group. Then, I will focus on the problem of the spindle assembly. Search-and-Capture model, according to which sister kinetochores are captured independently and stochastically by microtubules from opposite spindle poles, was very helpful for about 25 years, but recent data is casting doubt on this model. I will describe the recent data on tracking all centrosomes in kinetochores in the spindle in 3D, show what data analysis tells us about the spindle assembly, and finish with a discussion of possible new models.


Short Bio: Prof. Alex Mogilner received M.Eng. degree in EngineeringPhysics in 1985 from the Ural Polytechnic Institute. He received a PhD degree inPhysics from the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1990. He did research inMathematical Physics until 1992, when he started studying Mathematical Biologyat the University of British Columbia. After receiving a Ph.D. degree (adviser LeahEdelstein-Keshet) in Applied Mathematics from UBC in 1995, Alex worked at UCBerkeley with George Oster as a postdoctoral researcher, and in 1996 he came tothe Math Department at the University of California at Davis as an AssistantProfessor. He became an Associate professor in 1999, and in 2002 he became aProfessor at the Department of Mathematics and Department of Neurobiology,Physiology and Behavior at UC Davis. Since 2014, Dr. Mogilner is a Professor ofMathematics and Biology at Courant Institute and Department of Biology at theNew York University. Alex's areas of expertise include Mathematical Biology,Cell Biology and Biophysics; he does research on mathematical and computationalmodeling of cell motility, cell division, and galvanotaxis. Alex published about130 papers in high impact journals including Nature, Science, PNAS. Hedeveloped models of keratocyte motility, polymerization ratchet, andsearch-and-capture mechanism of spindle assembly. His research is/was supportedby NIH and NSF grants, Army Office of Research and by United States-IsraelBinational Science Foundation. Alex served on editorial boards of many journalsincluding Cell, Biophysical Journal, Current Biology, Journal of Cell Biology,Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Molecular Biology of the Cell. He gaveplenary talks and organized many international conferences on mathematicalbiology and cell biophysics and taught at many summer schools. Dr. Mogilner wasa panel chair at NIH.