Arup K. Chakraborty

Arup K. Chakraborty joined Flagship Pioneering in 2022 as an Academic Partner. In this part-time role, Arup will provide strategic and technical guidance to Flagship and its companies regarding biology-driven computational modelling. He will also work closely with the Apriori Bio team, of which he is a founding member, as the company advances its pioneering technology platform Octavia™ to design new vaccines and antibody drugs against the most threatening variants.

Arup is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and one of 12 Institute Professors at MIT, the highest rank awarded to a MIT faculty member. He served as the founding Director of MIT’s Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and he is a founding member of the Ragon Institute of MIT, MGH, and Harvard. Arup is one of only 25 individuals who are members of all three branches of the US National Academies – the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Engineering. He is also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the recipient of numerous awards and honors.

For over two decades, Arup’s work has largely focused on bringing together approaches from immunology, physics, and engineering. His interests span T cell signaling, T cell development and repertoire, and a mechanistic understanding of virus evolution, antibody responses, and vaccine design. He is a co-author of Viruses, Pandemics, & Immunity, published in 2021.

Arup previously served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Flagship-founded Repertoire Immune Medicines and Omega Therapeutics and is a scientific advisor to several other biotech companies. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust and an Advisor to the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation.

Arup earned his Bachelor of Technology in Chemical Engineering at IIT. He completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Minnesota.