Alex Shalek

Alex Shalek is the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) and the Department of Chemistry, as well as the director of IMES at MIT. He holds several leadership positions, including director of the Health Innovation Hub. He is also an extramural member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research; a member of the Ragon Institute of Mass General, MIT, and Harvard; an institute member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; an assistant in immunology at Mass General Brigham; and an instructor in health sciences and technology at Harvard Medical School.

The Shalek Lab’s research seeks to uncover how communities of cells work together within human tissues to support health, and how they become dysregulated in disease. By developing and applying innovative experimental and computational technologies, they are shedding light on a wide range of human health conditions. Shalek and his team use a cross-disciplinary approach that combines genomics, chemical biology, and nanotechnology to develop platforms to profile and control cells and their interactions. Collaborating with researchers across the globe, they apply these tools to study human diseases in great detail. Their goal is to connect what occurs at a cellular level with what medical professionals observe in patients, paving the way for more precise ways to prevent and treat diseases.

Shalek received his bachelor’s degree in chemical physics from Columbia University and his master’s and PhD in chemical physics from Harvard University.

Selected Publications

• Corleis, B., Tzouanas, C. N., Wadsworth II, M, H., Cho, J. L., Linder, A. H., Schiff, A. E., Zessin, B., Stei, F., Dorhoi, A., Dickey, A. K., Medoff, B. D., Shalek, A. K., Kwon, D. S., “Tobacco smoke exposure recruits inflammatory airspace monocytes that establish permissive lung niches for Mycobacterium tuberculosis,” Science Translational Medicine, 15 (2023).
• Kummerlowe, C., Mwakamui, S., Hughes, T.K., Mulugeta, N., Mudenda, V., Besa, E., Zyambo, K., Shay, J.E.S., Fleming, I., Vukovic, M., Doran, B.A., Aicher, T.P., Wadsworth II, M.H., Bramante, J.T., Uchida, A.M., Fardoos, R., Asowata, O.E., Herbert, N., Yilmaz, O.H., Kløverpris, H.N., Garber, J.J., Ordovas-Montañes, J., Gartner, Z.J., Wallach, T., Shalek, A.K., Kelly, P., “Single-cell profiling of environmental enteropathy reveals signatures of epithelial remodeling and immune activation,” Science Translational Medicine, 14 (2022).
• Mead, B.E., Hattori, K., Levy, L., Imada, S., Goto, N., Vukovic, M., Sze, D., Kummerlowe, C., Matute, J.D., Duan, J., Langer, R., Blumberg, R.S., Ordovas-Montanes, J., Yilmaz, O.H., Karp, J.M., Shalek, A.K., “Screening for modulators of the cellular composition of gut epithelia via organoid models of intestinal stem cell differentiation,” Nature Biomedical Engineering, 6 (2022).

Media

• August 9, 2024: MIT News, Alex Shalek named director of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science
• July 21, 2022: MIT News, When cells’ tiny differences have far-reaching implications
• April 23, 2020: MIT News, Alex Shalek wins Edgerton Faculty Award