Pint of View Lecture 5: The Clock Within - How Your Body Tells Time

Pint of View London presents

The Clock Within: How Your Body Tells Time

From jet lag to night owls: decoding your internal time

Have you ever wondered why some of us are "early morning" people while many seem to prefer late nights, or why jet lag seems much worse when travelling eastwards? This talk explores the fascinating world of circadian rhythms: the internal biological clock that governs our daily lives.

From ancient observations of day–night patterns in health and disease to modern scientific discoveries, we now know that nearly every cell in our body contains its own clock. These clocks are not simply reactions to the environment; they are built-in systems that keep time through intricate molecular feedback loops, much like a carefully balanced thermostat. We will explore how these internal clocks stay synchronised with the external world, why different people have different "body times" (chronotypes), and what happens when this synchronisation breaks down, such as during shift work or jet lag.

Finally, the talk highlights exciting advances in measuring body time using modern methods of Artificial Intelligence, opening the door to personalised medicine where treatments can be timed for maximum effectiveness. This journey reveals how deeply time is woven into our physiology, and why keeping our internal clocks ticking properly is essential for health.

Tickets include a free pint. Expect 45 minutes of lecture followed by a Q&A. Then we open it up for mixing, conversations, and meeting people who are just as curious as you.  

About The Speaker

Dr. Shaon Chakrabarti is an assistant professor at the Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines at the National Centre of Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India.

His lab combines approaches from theoretical physics, machine learning and experiments to understand fundamental principles in biological systems such as the circadian clock and cancer.

Before NCBS, Shaon was a post-doc at Harvard University and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, developing novel approaches to designing targeted therapy regimens in cancer using the mathematics of cancer evolution.

Prior to that, Shaon did his PhD at the University of Maryland, College Park, studying the physics of molecular motors.

We are delighted to welcome Dr Chakrabarti, joining us during his visit to London - a reflection of our international community.

Information on us and tickets can be found on our main page here.