Tang Chao (; born 1958) is a Chair Professor of

Physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and Systems Biology at Peking University.

Education

He had his undergraduate training at the

University of Science and Technology of China A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

, then went to the United States through the CUSPEA program organized by Professor T. D. Lee. He received a Ph.D. degree in Physics from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

Career

In his early career, he worked on problems in

statistical physics Statistical physics is a branch of physics that evolved from a foundation of statistical mechanics, which uses methods of probability theory and statistics, and particularly the mathematical tools for dealing with large populations and approxim ...

dynamical system In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in ...

and complex systems. In 1987, along with

Per Bak Per Bak (8 December 1948 – 16 October 2002) was a Danish theoretical physicist who coauthored the 1987 academic paper that coined the term "self-organized criticality." Life and work After receiving his Ph.D. from the Technical University of ...

and

Kurt Wiesenfeld Kurt Wiesenfeld is an American physicist working primarily on non-linear dynamics. His works primarily concern stochastic resonance, spontaneous synchronization of coupled oscillators, and non-linear laser dynamics. Since 1987, he has been profe ...

, he proposed the concept and developed the theory for

self-organized criticality Self-organized criticality (SOC) is a property of dynamical systems that have a critical point as an attractor. Their macroscopic behavior thus displays the spatial or temporal scale-invariance characteristic of the critical point of a phase ...

, which had and continues to have broad applications in complex systems with

scale invariance In physics, mathematics and statistics, scale invariance is a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energy, or other variables, are multiplied by a common factor, and thus represent a universality. The technical term ...

. The model they used to illustrate the idea is referred to as the Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld "sandpile" model. His current research interest is at the interface between physics and biology. Specifically, he focuses on systems biology and works on problems such as

protein folding Protein folding is the physical process by which a protein chain is translated to its native three-dimensional structure, typically a "folded" conformation by which the protein becomes biologically functional. Via an expeditious and reproduc ...

cell cycle The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the series of events that take place in a cell that cause it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the duplication of its DNA (DNA replication) and some of its organelles, and sub ...

regulation, function-topology relationship in

biological network A biological network is a method of representing systems as complex sets of binary interactions or relations between various biological entities. In general, networks or graphs are used to capture relationships between entities or objects. A typi ...

cell fate determination Within the field of developmental biology, one goal is to understand how a particular cell develops into a final cell type, known as fate determination. Within an embryo, several processes play out at the cellular and tissue level to create an organ ...

and design principles in biological systems. He was a tenured Full Professor at the

University of California San Francisco The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It condu ...

before returning to China in 2011. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republi ...

, the founding director of the interdisciplinary Center for Quantitative Biology at Peking University and the founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Quantitative Biology.

Selected publications

*Self-organized criticality *Protein folding *

Robustness Robustness is the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. When it is transposed into a system, it refers to the ability of tolerating perturbations that might affect the system’s functional body. In the same line ''robustness'' ca ...

control *Network topology, function and dynamics *Cell fate determination

References

External links

Professor Tang's lab

Center for Quantitative Biology

Journal of Quantitative Biology
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tang, Chao 1958 births Living people People from Nanchang Scientists from Jiangxi University of California, San Francisco faculty Peking University faculty University of Science and Technology of China alumni University of Chicago alumni Physicists from Jiangxi Educators from Jiangxi