Andrzej Duda, President of the Republic of Poland, appointed Paweł Paszek from the Department of Biosystems and Soft Matter at IPPT PAN as a professor in the category of engineering and technical sciences in the field of biomedical engineering. The President signed the nomination act on 29 February 2024.
Prof. Paszek specializes in the quantitative analysis of signaling pathways in immune cells. His work combines advanced mathematical methods with experimental techniques, focusing on confocal live-cell microscopy and single-cell transcriptomics.
Fot. Prof. Paweł Paszek. Presentation of a congratulatory letter from the Director of IPPT PAN and the Chair of the Scientific Council during the ceremony at IPPT PAN.
Prof. Dr. Hab. Eng. Paweł Paszek graduated from the Faculty of Automatic Control, Electronics, and Computer Science at the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice, Poland. He earned his doctoral degree from the Department of Statistics at Rice University (2001-2006), with a thesis titled Modeling Stochasticity in Gene Regulation. Subsequently, he undertook a post-doctoral internship in Prof. White's laboratory at the University of Liverpool (2006-2011), one of the first laboratories globally to use confocal live-cell microscopy for analyzing cell pathways. His work led to publications in Science and PNAS, where he described NF-kB pathway dynamics.
In 2011, Prof. Paszek established his own research team at the Faculty of Biology, Medicine, and Health at Manchester University, supported by the Biotechnology and Biology Research Council UK (BBSRC) David Phillips Research Fellowship (2011-2016). He became a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at Manchester University in 2018.
At Manchester, Prof. Paszek focused on modeling and analyzing signaling pathways (including NF-kB and STAT) and stochastic transcription processes. His research team published numerous scholarly articles that significantly advanced the understanding of the immune system responses (Nature Communications, Science Signalling, Cell Systems).
In 2018, his research on NF-kB pathway analysis earned him a habilitation degree (postdoctoral degree in Poland) in biomedical engineering from the Silesian University of Technology in Gliwice. His methodological innovations contributed to groundbreaking research on the NF-κB pathway and circadian rhythms, supported by a BBSRC sLOLA grant (2013-2019). These advances also enabled his participation in a SysMedIDB international consortium (EU 7th Framework Programme) on IBD Pathophysiology (2012-2017).
At Manchester, Prof. Paszek designed devices to study interactions between immune cells and bacteria, leading to a BBSRC grant (2018-2022) for research on Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, a significant pathogen in the human digestive system. During his time at Manchester, he supervised five doctoral dissertations and co-supervised three more.
Between 2022 and 2023, he secured two Polish grants – NAWA Polskie Powroty and NCN OPUS – focused on immune system responses to bacterial infections. These grants facilitated his transition to the IPPT PAN, where he began his new role on September 1, 2024.
