Pankaj Mehta

About

Pankaj Mehta is a Professor of Physics and Computing & Data Sciences at Boston University. His research interests focus on theoretical problems at the interface of physics and biology. For more information about his work, he directs interested individuals to visit his website. As a faculty member, he is involved in the academic and research activities of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in these interdisciplinary fields.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Ecology
• Environmental science
• Physics
• Computational biology
• Chemical physics
• Genetics
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• The in vivo genetic program of murine primordial lung epithelial progenitors

  Nature Communications · 2020 · 68 citations

  Abstract Multipotent Nkx2-1-positive lung epithelial primordial progenitors of the foregut endoderm are thought to be the developmental precursors to all adult lung epithelial lineages. However, little is known about the global transcriptomic programs or gene networks that regulate these gateway progenitors in vivo. Here we use bulk RNA-sequencing to describe the unique genetic program of in vivo murine lung primordial progenitors and computationally identify signaling pathways, such as Wnt and…

  DOI

• Effect of Resource Dynamics on Species Packing in Diverse Ecosystems

  Physical Review Letters · 2020 · 66 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  The competitive exclusion principle asserts that coexisting species must occupy distinct ecological niches (i.e., the number of surviving species cannot exceed the number of resources). An open question is to understand if and how different resource dynamics affect this bound. Here, we analyze a generalized consumer resource model with externally supplied resources and show that-in contrast to self-renewing resources-species can occupy only half of all available environmental niches. This motiva…

  DOI

• A differentiable Gillespie algorithm for simulating chemical kinetics, parameter estimation, and designing synthetic biological circuits

  eLife · 2025-03-17 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The Gillespie algorithm is commonly used to simulate and analyze complex chemical reaction networks. Here, we leverage recent breakthroughs in deep learning to develop a fully differentiable variant of the Gillespie algorithm. The differentiable Gillespie algorithm (DGA) approximates discontinuous operations in the exact Gillespie algorithm using smooth functions, allowing for the calculation of gradients using backpropagation. The DGA can be used to quickly and accurately learn kinetic paramete…

  PublisherDOI

• Ultra-high-throughput mapping of genetic design space

  Nature · 2026-01-14 · 4 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• A theory of ecological invasions and its implications for eco-evolutionary dynamics

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-03-17 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Predicting the outcomes of species invasions is a central goal of ecology, a task made especially challenging due to ecological feedbacks. To address this, we develop a general theory of ecological invasions applicable to a wide variety of ecological models: including Lotka-Volterra models, consumer resource models, and models with cross feeding. Importantly, our framework remains valid even when invading evolved (non-random) communities and accounts for invasion-driven species extinctions. We d…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant K25GM086909

  NIH · $644k · 2014

• MODELING EMERGENT BEHAVIORS IN SYSTEMS BIOLOGY: A BIOLOGICAL PHYSICS APPROACH

  NIH · $3.6M · 2016–2027

• NIH Grant R01NS014406

  NIH · $58k · 1987

Frequent coauthors

• Thomas Wısnıewskı

  New York University

  57 shared

• Bruce A. Patrick

  New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities

  42 shared

• Suzanne Craft

  Wake Forest University

  41 shared

• Robert Marsland

  Boston University

  40 shared

• Laura D. Baker

  Wake Forest University

  38 shared

• Stephen R. Plymate

  University of Washington

  38 shared

• G. Stennis Watson

  Murdoch University

  38 shared

• Wenping Cui

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  37 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Physics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1994

• M.S., Physics

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1990

• B.S., Physics

  Harvard University

  1988

Similar researchers at Boston University

• Charles DeLisih-67
• Marshall Van Alstyneh-56
• Daniel Segrèh-50