Channel: caltech

Category: Science & Technology

Description: A Language Whose Characters are Triangles CPET Annual Seminar by 2021 Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching Recipient, Professor Rob Phillips Jump to: Introductions - 00:07 Professor Phillips presentation - 1:58 Q&A - 45:31 The 2021 Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching, awarded to Rob Phillips, the Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics, Biology, and Physics in the divisions of Engineering and Applied Science and Biology and Biological Engineering, honors his unique approaches, creativity, and innovation in teaching. Rob describes his talk this way: "Receiving the Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching is one of the signature honors of my entire life. The greatest scientific honor of them all has been the opportunity to use ideas from physics, mathematics, and biology to explore the mysteries of the natural world. One of the most intriguing outcomes of casting our thinking about the world around us in mathematical terms is that phenomena that were thought to be quite distinct are instead revealed as being the 'same.' Thinkers as long ago as Pliny the Elder made observations on living matter such as flocks of birds noting: 'It is a peculiarity of the starling to fly in troops, as it were, and then to wheel round in a globular mass like a ball, the central troop acting as a pivot for the rest.' In this talk I will describe the emergence of the modern theory of active matter as a prelude to describing the complex motions of a class of single-celled eukaryotes such as the causative agents of malaria and toxoplasmosis. I will then show how we have used this theory at a billion-fold smaller scale than the animal flocks that inspired it to describe the motion of 'flocks' of actin that power the movement of these cells. The goal of the talk will be to give a powerful sense of the sameness of broad classes of biological phenomena with an eye to many of the great challenges that remain as we try to understand the answer to Erwin Schrodinger's question: What is life?" Learn more: - CPET, the Caltech Project for Effective Teaching, is a group of graduate students and postdocs dedicated to becoming more effective educators and helping each other to do the same. teachlearn.caltech.edu/cpet. - Center for Teaching, Learning, and Outreach: ctlo.caltech.edu - Rob Phillips Group: rpgroup.caltech.edu - Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching: caltech.edu/about/news/rob-phillips-awarded-2021-feynman-teaching-prize Produced in association with Caltech Academic Media Technologies. ©2021 California Institute of Technology