Steve Abel, Principal Investigator
Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Affiliate Faculty Member, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis
Academic history:
Postdoctoral Associate, Chemical Engineering, MIT
Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, Stanford University
B.S. in Chemical Physics, B.A. in Mathematics, B.A. in Physics, Rice University
Brief bio: Steve Abel received his undergraduate education at Rice University, where he earned a B.S. in Chemical Physics, a B.A. in Mathematics, and a B.A. in Physics. He received a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University and was a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His graduate research focused on developing theoretical methods to understand and describe the highly correlated motion of molecules in dense liquids. His postdoctoral work applied theory and computation to understand how T cells, the primary orchestrators of adaptive immunity, identify and respond to pathogens. This work was carried out in close collaboration with experimentalists, with a particular emphasis on understanding how the membrane environment influences signal transduction in cells.