Charles Falco (Professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona)

Abstract: Recently, renowned artist David Hockney observed that certain drawings and paintings from as early as the Renaissance seemed almost "photographic" in detail. Following an extensive visual investigation of western art of the past 1000 years, he made the revolutionary claim that artists even of the prominence of van Eyck and Bellini must have used optical aids. However, many art historians insisted there was no supporting evidence for such a remarkable assertion. In this talk I show a wealth of optical evidence for his claim that Hockney and I subsequently discovered during an unusual, and remarkably productive, collaboration between an artist and a scientist. I also discuss the imaging properties of the "mirror lens" (concave mirror), and some of the implications this work has for the history of science as well as the history of art (and the modern fields of machine vision and computerized image analysis). These discoveries convincingly demonstrate optical instruments were in use -- by artists, not scientists -- nearly 200 years earlier than commonly thought possible, and account for the remarkable transformation in the reality of portraits that occurred early in the 15th century. (for more information see http://www.optics.arizona.edu/ssd/FAQ.html)

Bio: Charles Falco is a Professor of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona where he holds the UA Chair of Condensed Matter Physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the Optical Society of America, has published more than 250 scientific manuscripts, most of which are related to various physical properties of thin film materials, co-edited two books, has seven U.S. patents, and has given more than 200 invited talks on his research at conferences and research institutions in some 20 countries. However, in addition to his scientific research, in 1998 he was co-recipient of an award from the AICA for his work as co-curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum's "The Art of the Motorcycle," for which he also wrote the exhibition catalog's introductory essay and bibliography. With over 2 million visitors thus far in New York, Chicago, Bilbao, and the Guggenheim Las Vegas, it is by far the most successful exhibition of industrial design ever assembled, and is the 5th most attended museum exhibition of any kind. More recently, a collaboration with the artist David Hockney that found artists of such repute as van Eyck, Bellini and Caravaggio used optical projections in creating portions of their work has resulted in widespread coverage in the popular media, including an hour-long BBC special and a segment on CBS '60 Minutes', and over 70 invited talks and public lectures on this topic in eleven countries.

Peter Galison (Harvard University, Department of Physics)

Speaker Information coming soon.

David Heeger (New York University, Department of Psychology & Center for Neuroscience)

Brain Imaging: A New Window Into the Human Mind

Abstract: fMRI has revolutionized neuroscience over the past decade. It is similar to clinical MRI, but instead of making pictures of the anatomy of the brain, fMRI allows us to measure and characterize brain function. It has enabled a new era of research into the function and dysfunction of the human brain, complementary to more invasive techniques for measuring neural activity in animals. I will utilize some examples from research in my lab, to illustrate how fMRI in conjunction with computational theory is being used to understand how vision works in the brain.

Bio: David J. Heeger is a Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at New York University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania. He was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT, a research scientist at the NASA-Ames Research Center, and an Associate Professor at Stanford before coming NYU. His research spans an interdisciplinary cross-section of engineering, psychology, and neuroscience, the current focus of which is to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to quantitatively investigate the relationship between brain and behavior. He was awarded the David Marr Prize in computer vision in 1987, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in neuroscience in 1994, the Troland Award in psychology from the National Academy of Sciences in 2002, and the Margaret and Herman Sokol Faculty Award in the Sciences from New York University in 2006.

Stefan Hell (Director, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen)

Speaker Information coming soon.

Wesley Traub (Chief Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA)

Speaker Information coming soon.

Roger Tsien (University of California, San Diego, Department of Chemistry)

Abstract: Because many forms of long-lasting learning and memory involve growth or de novo formation of synapses, visualizing recently expanded or created synapses may indicate where memories are stored. A plausible strategy may be to selectively image newly synthesized proteins that preferentially accumulate in growing synapses.  However, existing methods for visualizing newly synthesized copies of specific proteins involving sequential chemical labeling or photoconversion are incompatible with deep tissues or freely behaving animals and have toxicity and sensitivity limitations. Here we report on TimeSTAMP, a new method in which a protein of interest is fused via hepatitis C viral protease to an epitope tag. The protease constitutively removes itself and the accompanying tag until a small-molecule inhibitor is administered; subsequently all newly synthesized fusion proteins remain epitope-tagged. TimeSTAMP shows that new synapses in cultured hippocampal neurons preferentially contain new copies of postsynaptic density proteins. In intact flies, TimeSTAMP reveals patterns of new CaMKII synthesis distinct from total CaMKII localization. TimeSTAMP should allow retrospective identification of new synapses and their key proteins anywhere in the nervous systems of freely behaving animals.
We have synthesized and tested novel imaging agents based on activatable cell-penetrating peptides (ACPPs) that are substrates for matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), proteases highly expressed in the tumor microenvironment. A simple ACPP is glu9-[MMP-cleavable linker]-arg9-Cy5, in which the polyanionic glu9 prevents the polycationic arg9 cell-penetrating peptide (CPP) from sticking to and entering cells. Proteolysis of the linker separates the glu9 from the arg9, freeing the arg9-Cy5 to be taken up onto and into cells in the vicinity of the protease activity, where the Cy5 can be visualized by its far-red fluorescence. Such ACPPs give useful in vivo fluorescence contrast, peaking a few hours after intravenous injection, in xenografts of various human tumor cells into nude mice as well as in MMTV-polyoma-middle-T (PyMT) mammary tumors in immunocompetent transgenic mice. This fluorescence contrast looks promising as a real-time guide to surgical resection. Analogous ACPPs in which Cy5 is replaced by Gd chelates constitute smart magnetic resonance (MR) contrast agents, which highlight PyMT tumors or downstream lymph nodes in T1-weighted MR images at 7 Tesla. Thus ACPPs offer a promising new general strategy to detect protease activities in vivo and to concentrate imaging and perhaps chemotherapeutic agents within tumors for diagnosis, intraoperative localization, and treatment, although much optimization will still be required.

Bio: Roger Y. Tsien was born in New York City in 1952 and received his A.B. in Chemistry and Physics summa cum laude from Harvard College in 1972. A Marshall Scholarship then took him to the Physiological Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. in 1977 and remained as a Research Fellow until 1981. He then became an Assistant, Associate, then full Professor in the Dept. of Physiology-Anatomy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1989 he moved to the University of California, San Diego, where he is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor in the Depts. of Pharmacology and of Chemistry & Biochemistry. In 1996 he was a scientific co-founder of Aurora Biosciences Corporation, which went public in 1997 and was acquired by Vertex Pharmaceuticals in 2001. In 1999 he was a scientific co-founder of Senomyx, Inc. His honors include 1st prize in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search (1968), Searle Scholar Award (1983), Passano Foundation Young Scientist Award (1991), W. Alden Spencer Award in Neurobiology from Columbia University (1991), Artois-Baillet-Latour Health Prize (1995), Gairdner Foundation International Award (1995), American Heart Association Basic Research Prize (1995), Pearse Prize of the Royal Microscopical Society (2000), Award for Creative Invention from the American Chemical Society (2002), Anfinsen Award of the Protein Society (2002), the Max Delbruck Medal (2002), the Heineken Prize in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2002), the Wolf Prize in Medicine (shared with Robert Weinberg, 2004), the Keio Medical Science Prize, Keio University (2004), the J. Allyn Taylor International Prize in Medicine (2005), and the Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Sciences (2006). He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1995, the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, and to the Royal Society (as a Foreign Member) in 2006. Dr. Tsien's research has been at the interfaces between organic chemistry, cell biology, and neurobiology, starting long before such interdisciplinary efforts became fashionable. He is best known for designing and building molecules that either report or perturb signal transduction inside living cells. These molecules, created by organic synthesis or by engineering naturally fluorescent proteins, have enabled many laboratories including his to gain new insights into signaling via calcium, sodium, pH, cyclic nucleotides, nitric oxide, inositol polyphosphates, membrane potential changes, protein phosphorylation, active export of proteins from the nucleus, and gene transcription. The optical reporter molecules are also valuable in miniaturized high-throughput screening of candidate drugs in the pharmaceutical industry. His current research goals are to understand how the spatial and temporal dynamics of signal transduction orchestrate complex cellular responses such as gene expression and synaptic plasticity. These goals will require improved molecular techniques to see and manipulate small-molecule messengers, protein phosphorylation, and protein-protein interaction in live cells and organisms. He is also developing new ways to target contrast agents and therapeutic agents to tumor cells based on their expression of extracellular proteases.

Penn Speakers

Ivan Dmochowski, Chemistry

Speaker Information coming soon.

Michael Lampson, Biology

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Gary Bernstein, Physics & Astronomy

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Amishi Jha, Psychology

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