RIKEN Research: Physics modeling of viral spread between cells

Prof. Catherine Beauchemin (Deputy Program Director, iTHEMS) was featured in the summer issue of RIKEN RESEARCH 2021.

Describe your role at RIKEN - I first joined RIKEN in 2016 as a senior visiting scientist at iTHES, the predecessor of the Interdisciplinary Theoretical and Mathematical Sciences (iTHEMS) program. In 2020, I became one of four iTHEMS deputy program directors. I am in a field I call ‘virophysics’; the application of physics methods to virology. Primarily, I construct computer and mathematical models to explain the experimental observations made when viruses infect cell cultures. In biology, such knowledge is usually advanced through experimental trial and error, but physics modeling can help streamline this process.

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