This talk will explore the development and application of predictive multiscale models in biosciences and bioengineering through physics-based approaches, emphasizing their collaborative validation across ex vivo constructs, model organisms, and human trials. Two key themes will be highlighted: targeted nanomedicine for immunotherapy and precision oncology. We will present advances in cancer mechanobiology, immune engineering, and systems biology, focusing on precision therapies enabled by nanomedicine.
Ravi Radhakrishnan,
University of Pennsylvania
The discussion will illustrate how AI-powered physics-based multiscale modeling, combined with high-performance computing, drives the creation of digital twin simulators for precision medicine. The talk will also describe an inclusive and accessible research and training ecosystem to foster responsible innovation, emphasizing transformative technologies like gene editing, synthetic nucleome and organoids, AI, super-resolution imaging, and single-cell methods. The projects are supported in part by funding from the NIH, NSF, and EU ERC, and by several Pharma and Biotech companies.
Ravi Radhakrishnan, Ph.D., holds the title of professor of bioengineering and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering. He is a member of the Genomics & Computational Biology and the Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics graduate groups at the University of Pennsylvania. Radhakrishnan is currently the Herman P. Schwan Chair of Bioengineering. He is a founder member and served as the former Director of the Penn Institute for Computational Sciences, an interdisciplinary institute promoting research at the interface of multiscale modeling, machine learning, and high-performance supercomputing.
He is actively engaged in and funded through several National and International multidisciplinary consortia, including the European Research Council’s Computational Horizons in Cancer (CHIC), the US National Cancer Institute’s Physical Sciences in Oncology Network and Cancer Systems Biology Consortium, and US National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering’s Multiscale Modeling Consortium. Ravi Radhakrishnan serves as a project leader of the NCI-funded Penn Physical Sciences in Oncology Network. He is a Working Group Leader of the High-Performance Computing Working Group for an Inter-Governmental
Consortium: Inter-Agency Modeling Group involving NIH, NSF, NASA, DOE, DOD, and DARPA. Radhakrishnan directs a computational research laboratory with research interests at the interface of biophysics and bioengineering. The goal of his lab is to: Create Digital Twin Models in Biomedical Engineering for Cancer Treatment and Next Generation Therapeutics. His lab specializes in several computational algorithms spanning the molecular and cellular scales in conjunction with the theoretical formalisms of statistical mechanics, applied machine learning, and high-performance scientific computing in parallel architectures.
He has forged successful and funded collaborations with pharmacologists, cell biologists, biophysical chemists, anaesthesiologists, and oncologists, primarily through grants from the US National Science Foundation, the US National Institutes of Health, and the European Research Council. Radhakrishnan has authored over 190 articles in leading peer-reviewed Journals, serves as a referee for over 45 leading journals, publishers, and federal funding agencies, and serves on the editorial board of five journals, including Scientific Reports of the Nature Publishing Group. He is the associate editor of Frontiers in Physiology. He has received the Hewlett Packard Investigator award and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine, Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical and Biological Engineers, and a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society.