Caltech Together: Silicon Valley
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Date: Thursday, February 20
Time: 5:30-7:00pm
If you would like to attend, register in advance for this webinar.
After the webinar, you are invited to talk to the speaker and mingle with other alumni in a post-webinar social via a Zoom meeting.
We look forward to seeing you.
Peter Tong
Why Humans Don’t Regenerate Better?
By Lea Goentoro
The fascination with regeneration is as old as human imagination itself. From the myths of the Hydra regrowing its heads to Prometheus’s liver regenerating each night, the concept has long captivated storytellers. In the natural world, remarkable examples of regeneration exist: salamanders can regrow limbs, and the cnidarian hydra can reform its body even after being severed.
Humans, however, possess only limited regenerative abilities. Some tissues, such as skin and portions of the liver, can recover after moderate injury, but this capacity falls far short of what is observed in species like salamanders and hydras. This raises a fundamental biological question: why do some animals regenerate so effectively while others do not?
This discussion will explore recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of regeneration, including research aimed at inducing regenerative processes in animals. Insights from these studies may eventually lead to applications that enhance human regenerative capabilities.
About the Speaker
Lea Goentoro is a Professor of Biology at Caltech. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering at Princeton University and postdoctoral training at Harvard Medical School. She is the recipient of the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF Career Award, and the James S. McDonnell Scholarship in Complex Systems. Findings from her lab include how cells compute logarithm, how jellyfish can mechanically rearrange body parts, and jellyfish, though they do not have a brain, sleeps. In the past decade, she has focused on studying the problems of regeneration.
Our Alumni Volunteers
The following alumni work together to serve you:
Avni Gandhi, Dave Adler, Jane Frommer, Mike Klein, Xinh Huynh, and Peter Tong.