Reka Albert

Biosketch

Réka Albert is an Evan Pugh University Professor at the Pennsylvania State University with joint appointments in the Department of Physics, the Department of Biology, and the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences. A Hungarian-born native of Transylvania, she received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Physics from the Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Notre Dame. Prof. Albert is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Network Science Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is also an external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her honors include the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award of the American Physical Society and the Distinguished Graduate Alumna award of the University of Notre Dame.

Research Interests

Prof. Albert’s research seeks to uncover the mechanisms that determine the dynamic repertoire of complex networks, with a particular emphasis on biological networks. She was among the pioneers of logical (Boolean) modeling of biological systems. Her group’s models yield both specific biological predictions as well as general insight into the structural basis of dynamic outcomes. In collaborative projects with wet-bench biologists and clinicians, she has proposed network control interventions to mitigate the effect of dysregulations in biological systems. These interventions have been validated across diverse contexts, including signal transduction networks in plant and human cells and the immune response to pathogens. Prof. Albert’s current research puts equal focus on predictive modeling of biological networks and on advancing the methodologies to construct and analyze logical models.