The AUS Student Chapter of the Engineering in Medicine andBiology Society will host world-class researchers and professors from New YorkUniversity (NYU) in a discussion panel on topics at the frontier of biomedicalresearch and their current applications.

About the speakers:

Youssef Idaghdour (Assistant Professor of Biology)

BS in Biology from Ibn Zohr in Agadir; MS, University ofLeicester; PhD, North Carolina State University. Youssef Idaghdour studies howgenome and environment interact. In particular, he is interested incharacterizing genetic and gene-environment interactions and how they transduceinto the phenotypic level moving from the architecture of the genome itself toprotein function and transitioning through the complex modes of gene expressionregulation. His laboratory uses statistical genetic methods and multiple typesof high-throughput genomic data including genome sequencing, epigenetic andtranscriptomic profiling, proteomics and metabolomics to study theseinteractions in the human circulating immune system. The goal is to gain basicbiological insight about the perturbations of molecular networks taking placeduring the onset of disease and under certain pathologic contexts includingmetabolic syndrome and infection. Youssef grew up in southern Morocco where helater graduated with BSc in Biology and spent several years working onendangered avian species. After completing his MS training in MolecularGenetics at the University of Leicester in the UK and PhD training in Geneticsat North Carolina State University under a Fulbright Scholarship, he received aBanting Postdoctoral Fellowship and became part of a large program in medicaland population genomics at Sainte-Justine Research Center in Montreal prior tojoining New York University Abu Dhabi.

Yong Song (Assistant Professor of Mechanical andBiomedical Engineering)

Rafael Song's research and teaching interests areinterdisciplinary in both mechanical engineering disciplines such as design andmanufacturing of MEMS devices, fluid mechanics, and micro/nanofabrication, aswell as in biological engineering areas such as BioMEMS devices for separationand detection of biomolecules, neuroprosthetic implants, and transportphenomena in biological systems. He received his BS, MS, and PhD from RWTHAachen University, Germany and worked at the Korea Institute of Science andTechnology (KIST) as a Senior Research Scientist. He joined Fraunhofer USA as aSenior Engineer in 2001 and worked in the Micro/Nanofluidic BioMEMS Group inthe Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT as aResearch Scientist. Song held an appointment as a Research Fellow at the BethIsrael Deaconess Medical Center in Boston until he joined NYUAD in September2012. He currently holds an affiliate appointment at the Department of Chemicaland Biomolecular Engineering at NYU-Poly. Song was awarded the PostdoctoralFellowship from Merck/Computational Systems Biology Initiative of MIT for2004-2006 and an Outstanding Research Team Award from President of KIST in2000. He is a recipient of the German Konrad-Adenauer Foundation Scholarship.

Justin Blau (Professor of Biology and Director of NYUBiology PhD program)

BA, Cambridge University (UK); PhD, University of London

Justin Blau joined NYU in 2000. In his research, he studieshow behavior is hard-wired into the nervous system, focusing on the internalbiological clock that drives 24-hour ("circadian") rhythms such assleep-wake cycles. He uses the Drosophila fruitfly model system to understandhow the gene and neuronal networks underlying these clocks make them so robust.He was also a recent winner of the NYU Golden Dozen teaching award.

For more information, please contact embs@aus.edu.