Pankaj Mehta

Pankaj Mehta
Nationality	American
Alma mater	California Institute of Technology Rutgers University
Scientific career
Fields	Biophysics, statistical physics, theoretical ecology, systems biology, hard condensed matter theory
Institutions	Boston University Princeton University
Academic advisors	Natan Andrei, Ned Wingreen
Website	physics.bu.edu/~pankajm/

Pankaj Mehta is an American theoretical physicist whose research has involved biophysics, statistical physics, machine learning theory, and hard condensed matter theory. He is a professor in the Boston University Department of Physics.

Mehta has worked on statistical mechanics tools in theoretical community ecology, information-theoretic analysis of quorum sensing, biological information processing, and cell fate development models. In his work on theoretical ecology, Mehta has described consumer-resource models and statistical physics-based approaches to niche and coexistence theory.

Education and career

Mehta received a B.S. in mathematics from California Institute of Technology in 2000. Mehta then received his PhD in physics from Rutgers University specializing in hard condensed matter physics in 2006 under the supervision of Natan Andrei. He was a postdoctoral scholar at Princeton University's departments of molecular biology and physics where he worked under the supervision of Ned Wingreen from 2006-2010. In this time, he worked on information processing among cells and bacterial quorum sensing.

In 2010, Mehta became an assistant professor in the Boston University department of physics, later receiving tenure in 2015. At Boston University, he is a member of the Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences, founded in 2020. He also is an affiliate faculty member of Boston University's Department of Biomedical Engineering, Center for Regenerative Medicine, and Biological Design Center. Mehta's current research focuses on modelling large, complex microbial ecosystems, cell fate development, and other systems at the interface of biology and physics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

Honors

• Fellow of the American Physical Society, nominated by the Division of Biological Physics (2023), for "creative and impactful use of statistical mechanics tools in addressing a broad range of problems, from biological information processing and microbial ecology to machine learning theory."
• Simons Investigator in the Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems (2014)
• Scialog Fellow, Molecules Come to Life (2014)
• Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Innovation in Teaching Award (2014)
• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2011)

Publications

• Mehta P, Wang CH, Day AG, Richardson C, Bukov M, Fisher CK, Schwab DJ (May 2019). "A high-bias, low-variance introduction to Machine Learning for physicists". Phys Rep. 810: 1–124. doi:10.1016/j.physrep.2019.03.001. PMC 6688775. PMID 31404441.
• Mehta, Pankaj; Schwab, David (14 October 2014). "An exact mapping between the Variational Renormalization Group and Deep Learning". arXiv:1410.3831 [stat.ML]. See Quanta and Wired magazines.
• Wenping Cui, Robert Marsland III, Pankaj Mehta (8 March 2024). "Les Houches Lectures on Community Ecology: From Niche Theory to Statistical Mechanics". arXiv:2403.05497 [q-bio.PE].{{cite arXiv}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) From Les Houches School of Physics.
• Mehta, Pankaj; Schwab, David J. (October 8, 2012). "Energetic costs of cellular computation". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 109 (44): 17978–17982. arXiv:1203.5426. doi:10.1073/pnas.1207814109. PMC 3497803. PMID 23045633.
• Mehta, Pankaj; Goyal, Sidhartha; Long, Tao; Bassler, Bonnie L; Wingreen, Ned S (17 November 2009). "Information processing and signal integration in bacterial quorum sensing". Molecular Systems Biology. 5 (1): 325. doi:10.1038/msb.2009.79. PMC 2795473. PMID 19920810.
• Fisher, Charles K.; Mehta, Pankaj (August 25, 2014). "The transition between the niche and neutral regimes in ecology". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 111 (36): 13111–13116. arXiv:1308.2969. doi:10.1073/pnas.1405637111. PMC 4246938. PMID 25157131.
• Wenping, Cui; Marsland, Robert; Mehta, Pankaj (21 July 2020). "Effect of Resource Dynamics on Species Packing in Diverse Ecosystems". Physical Review Letters. 125 (4): 048101. arXiv:1911.02595. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.048101. PMC 8999492. PMID 32794828. See Physics (magazine).