Indian American professor to receive honorary degree from University of Chicago

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The University of Chicago will confer honorary degrees upon five renowned scholars at its June 2023 Convocation when it will also honor Chancellor Emeritus and President Emeritus Robert J. Zimmer for his leadership and service to the University, a press release from the University said.

The scholars to be honored include Profs. Arup K. Chakraborty, a scientist and engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; James P. Comer, a child psychiatrist at the Yale School of Medicine; Hélène Esnault, a mathematician at the Freie Universität Berlin; Callum Roberts, a scholar of marine conservation at the University of Exeter; and James A. Wells, a pharmaceutical scientist at the University of California, San Francisco.

Chakraborty, one of the 12 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will receive the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Science from University of Chicago.

Over the last 23 years, his work has focused on bringing together immunology and the physical and engineering sciences and applying the principles and tools of statistical mechanics to the behavior of the adaptive immune system and viral infection. His research has explored immunological synapses and cell signaling, development of the immune cell repertoire, immune responses, especially with respect to HIV, and formation of biological condensates and how they play an important role in transcription.

The Indian American educator is also a Professor of Chemical Engineering, Physics and Chemistry.

“A distinguished scientist and engineer, Chakraborty is described as one of the most gifted and creative contemporary thinkers working at the confluence of molecular engineering, theoretical immunology, biophysics and statistical mechanics,” the press release said, adding, that his work “has changed the direction of immunology research.”

Chakraborty “revolutionized” the field of computational immunology by helping establish principles that underlie basic immunological phenomena and expanding the computational immunology toolbox.

His work has been especially impactful because of his collaborations with basic and clinical immunologists, University of Chicago noted.