Thorsten Prüstel, Ph.D.

Staff Scientist

Contact: For contact information, search the NIH Enterprise Directory.

Education:

B.S., Ph.D., University of Hamburg, Germany

Languages Spoken: German
Photo of Thorsten Prüstel, Ph.D.

Biography

Thorsten Prüstel is a Staff Scientist in the Computational Systems Biology Section. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Hamburg in Germany. Main foci of Thorsten’s research are on stochastic modeling and quantitative analyses of interactions between cells and their environment. Goal of his research is to contribute to a better understanding of how molecular mechanisms allow the immune system to process and categorize information about pathogens it encounters. Realizing that all molecular interactions underlying cellular signaling processes are inherently stochastic, Thorsten has been developing mathematical approaches and computational tools for single particle-based modeling of biological reaction-diffusion processes. A major contribution of his research is the first derivation of the two-dimensional Green’s function describing stochastic interactions on membranes. Thorsten is the main developer of the stochastic component of the modeling software Simmune for which he is integrating single particle-based representations of cellular signaling pathways with realistic models of cellular morphology.