Seminar “May the Force be with you! Piezo channels in mechanosensory biology” with Ardem Patapoutian, 2021 Nobel Prize, on May 28

On Wednesday, May 28 at 11am in the Duclaux lecture hall, we will have the pleasure of welcoming Ardem Patapoutian (2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) for a seminar entitled ‘May the Force be with you! Piezo channels in mechanosensory biology’. The seminar will be hosted by Yasmine Belkaid.

Ardem Patapoutian is a professor at Scripps Research, where his laboratory discovered mechanosensitive ion channels, specifically PIEZO1 and PIEZO2, which allow cells to sense mechanical forces like pressure and proprioception (the sense of body position). He was awarded the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, shared with David Julius, for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and pressure involved in touch, pain, and regulating blood pressure. His research has deepened our understanding of how organisms perceive the physical world.

Of Armenian descent, Ardem Patapoutian was born in Lebanon and immigrated to the USA in 1986. He graduated from UCLA in 1990 and received his PhD from Caltech in 1996, subsequently performing postdoctoral training at UCSF. He joined the faculty of Scripps Research in 2000, where he is currently the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neurobiology and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. From 2000 to 2014, he held a joint appointment at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, as director of Discovery Research.

We encourage all of you to attend this seminar and get a chance to hear from a pioneering leader in the field of sensory biology, at the intersection of molecular biology and neuroscience.