Vaibhav Mohanty, PhD

My work introduces the foundations of fitness landscape design (FLD), my new approach to shape the evolutionary landscape of proteins to fight disease. Using FLD, I design “evolutionary traps”—for example, using antibodies—to combat the rapid evolution of proteins in infectious pathogens and in cancer. Broadly, I am interested in understanding links between thermodynamics of protein-protein interactions and protein evolution.

I am a fifth-year Harvard-MIT MD-PhD student in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology MD and Harvard Chemistry PhD programs, where I am funded by a Hertz Fellowship, a PD Soros Fellowship and by an NIH Medical Scientist Training Program grant. I am also a Resident Tutor and Co-Chair of Fellowships and Pre-Med Teams at Quincy House at Harvard College.

I utilize techniques from statistical physics of evolution, genotype-phenotype maps, and spin glasses and complex systems in my research. Past research has been in time-dependent quantum mechanics of graphene electrons, mathematics and music theory, and diffusion MRI.

I received a PhD in Theoretical Physics from the University of Oxford as a Marshall Scholar, where I worked in the Condensed Matter Theory group in Prof. Ard Louis’ group. In 2019, I received my master’s in Chemistry (Theory) and my bachelor’s in Chemistry and Physics with a minor in Music from Harvard University, where I was a Goldwater Scholar.

Outside of research, I am a classical and jazz composer, pianist, and saxophonist.