Past Events

Improving prenatal care through cell-free RNA liquid biopsies

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Abstract: Pregnancy complications like preeclampsia and preterm birth pose huge risks to fetal and maternal long-term health and a large financial burden. Here, I will describe the development 3 liquid biopsy tests that measure cell-free RNA (cfRNA) to monitor prenatal health and predict risk of pregnancy complications long before symptoms manifest. This work paves the way for affordable, simple, and reliable tests for preeclampsia and preterm delivery – risks that no other test can presently diagnose early enough to allow for meaningful clinical intervention.

From Quantum Information to the Black Hole Interior

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Abstract: Black holes have not just become laboratories for astronomers, but also present some of the deepest unsolved problems in theoretical physics. During the past decade surprising connections have been made between ideas from quantum information and gravitational physics. In this talk I will explain several aspects of these connections. In particular, we will see that by treating a black hole as a quantum computer, we can understand various properties of the black hole interior.

Leveraging Dynamic Properties to Understand Protein (Dys)function in Disease

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Abstract: The dynamical properties of proteins are critical for their function and are often perturbed in disease. Despite this knowledge, developing chemical probes that explicitly target protein dynamics is challenging, and therapeutic molecules that alter protein dynamics are often discovered serendipitously. However, all living organisms contain a dedicated class of proteins, termed molecular chaperones, that specifically regulate protein folding and dynamics to prevent pathological outcomes.

Mental Health First Aid

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Mental Health First Aid training helps a person with no clinical training assist someone experiencing a mental health crisis. Mental Health First Aiders learn a 5-step strategy to assess and support someone in crisis.

Participants are introduced to risk factors and warning signs, engage in experiential activities and learn about evidence-supported treatment and self-help strategies.

Competing interactions in dipolar erbium atoms

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Ultracold magnetic atoms exhibit short-range contact interactions together with longrange
dipole-dipole interactions. The competition between these two interactions
gives rise to various quantum phases [1], where the usually dominant mean-field
interactions are small and the system is governed by quantum fluctuations [2].
In this talk, I will first report on the study of a supersolid state and its excitation
spectrum [3]. In such a state, two symmetries are spontaneously broken: the gauge

Many-body phases in ultracold dipolar gases: novel quantum mixtures and supersolidity

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In the past decades, ultracold atomic gases revealed to be an ideal platform for simulating quantum phenomena thanks to the ability to tune the inter-particle interactions, the geometry of the system, and the possibility of adding complexity in a controlled way. Recently, ultracold gases made of magnetic atoms brought the discovery of exotic states of matter arising from long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions, such as liquid-like self-bound droplets and supersolid states [1].

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