Faculty

Research Interests: Nuclear dynamics during cell division and organismal development, mechanisms that divide organelle structure, defining functions of inner nuclear membrane proteins in the organization of single cells and complex tissues

Research Interests: Experimental condensed matter physics; NMR method development

Research Interests: Actin and cytoskeleton; clatherin mediated endocytosis; mathematical modeling combined with experiment; imaging

Research Interests: Super resolution imaging; nanoscopy

Research Interests: Melanoma biology; soft tissue tumors

Research Interests: Understanding mechanisms that underlie genetics forms of heart disease using computational and experimental tools and approaches.

Research Interests: Biophotonics; Nanophotonics; Complex optical materials and phenomena

Research Interests: Molecular basis of olfaction, taste, and pheromone perception

Research Interests: Structure and function of cortical networks: neuronal circuits; optical imaging

Research Interests: We study the molecular basis of cellular heterogeneity and tissue organization in health and disease through the lens of systems biology by pioneering novel computational and experimental tools, with applications to cardiovascular disease and ovarian aging.

Research Interests: Neuronal computation

Research Interests: research in the Dal Bello lab focuses on how microbes respond to and modify their environment, and how these feedback processes shape species interactions, assembly processes, and the function of microbial communities.

Research Interests: Using time-resolved spectral imaging at multiple scales, from in vitro to single cell to whole organism, to make connections between molecular mechanisms and cellular function

Research Interests: Molecular motors, cytoskeleton, polymer mechanics

Research Interests: Herpesvirus transcription and viral genome packaging

Research Interests: Build machine learning methds that are rooted in statistical physics to analyze high quality high dimensional “omics” data from biological systems

Research Interests: We combine theory and experiments to understand the computations organisms perform to navigate chemical environments. Bacteria: we analyze information processing in individual cells, the molecular basis of individuality, and how biological diversity benefits populations. Fruit flies: we examine how insects perform goal oriented olfactory navigation, and how they adapt decision-making strategies in real time as odor signal statistics and environmental conditions change

Research Interests: Combining single-cell analysis technology and systems biology to study cell-cell communication and cellular heterogeneity in human cancers and the immune system

Research Interests: Actin assembly; cytoskeletal protein dynamics; cellular motion; microscopy

Research Interests: How protein degradation controls the circadian clock in plants. Plant biology, circadian clock, light sensing, protein degradation, abiotic plant interactions, biological timing mechanisms, plant development.

Research Interests: Bioinformatics; biological database design, genomics; human genome annotation; gene expression analysis; data mining; macromolecular structure and function

Research Interests: Our group uses techniques rooted in molecular thermodynamics and computational chemistry to study the thermodynamics, kinetics and mechanism of phase transitions. We are interested in phenomena characterized as rare events. We are currently pursuing three active areas of interest: (i) crystal nucleation, (ii) hindered transport of ions and solutes through nanoporous membranes and channels, (iii) protein dynamics, folding and aggregation.

Research Interests: The systems biology, biomechanics and molecular biophysics of early spinal column development

Research Interests: Stem cells; wound healing; cellular mechanics

Research Interests: Microtubules and molecular motors. Branching morphogenesis of neurons. Motility of cilia and flagella. Nerve nets.

Research Interests: ascular mechanics; mechanobiology; design of tissue engineering constructs; computational modeling of vascular development, homeostasis, and disease

Research Interests: Synthetic Biology, Genome Engineering, Systems Biology, Bioengineering, Engineered biomaterials & RNAs

Research Interests: Membrane fusion and fission mechanisms, Cell membrane dynamics, Membrane trafficking, Optical tweezers, imaging, Electrophysiology

Research Interests: Antimicrobial/biocidal surface development and application of nanomaterials for water treatment

Research Interests: Nuclear mechanics; DNA repair; chromatin, nuclear envelope and cytoskeletal interconnectedness and structure

Research Interests: Method development and analysis of genomic patters; cancer biomaker discovery; epigenetics

Research Interests: Cellular shape and motility; biochemical dissection of signaling pathways; regulation of normal and cancer cell migration; and formation, function and stability of neural connections

Research Interests: Electron microscopy and X-ray imaging techniques to enable 3D imaging of neuronal circuits combined with behavior and functional imaging to reveal how circuit connectivity underlies brain activity and cognition.

Research Interests: Cryo-EM; numerical analysis and signal processing; geometry of data; computational biology algorithms; mathematics of data science

Research Interests: Systems Biology; Signal Transduction and Cell-Cell Communication; Cell Decision Making; Microfluidics and Micro- and Nano-fabrication; Stem Cell Engineering

Research Interests: Synaptic and neural circuit mechanisms underlying visual information processing; combining recording of neural activity in awake behaving animals, image processing, and computational modeling

Research Interests: DNA nanotechnology enabled molecular tools and biomimetic systems

Research Interests: Regulated cell alignment and tissue organization are vital in health and disease. To systematically investigate how cells respond to patterns, we achieve precise control over their arrangement through molecularly defined scaffolds. We innovate a continuous imaging platform tracking thousands of cells over days. Leveraging reams of data, we develop a hybrid procedure that utilizes statistical learning approaches to extend the state-of-the-art physics models.

Research Interests: Understanding how structure and function emerge in complex living systems, particularly the brain.

Research Interests: Developing machine learning and statistical tools to gain biological insights from spatial and single-cell data

Research Interests: Statistical physics of biological systems; critical points and phase transitions, membrane systems

Research Interests: We are developing electronic Imaging & Control of Microbial Functions, by studying how environmentally and clinically important microbes build & use hair-like “nanowires” to export electrons outside their cell body, during respiration, communication, and pathogenesis and by tuning nanowire conductivity using light, pressure, temperature, electromagnetic fields, and non-natural ‘click’ chemistry.

Research Interests: Synthetic developmental biology: measuring and controlling stem cells to understand how they self-organize multicellular structures in vitro (organoids, embryoids)

Research Interests: We seek to understand molecular mechanisms of emergent gene regulatory behavior, with a focus on temporal information transmission, mechanosensing, and chromatin biophysics.

Research Interests: HIV latency; signaling pathways; high-throughput single cell analysis; computational, experimental and systems-level approaches

Research Interests: Protein self-assembly; protein folding and dynamics; amyloid

Research Interests: Quantitative microscopy and image analysis. Chromatin organization and dynamics. Nuclear envelope physics. Phase transitions of soft matter

Research Interests: The Mogessie lab studies cytoskeletal organization and function with a special focus on chromosome segregation in mammalian eggs and the molecular origins of female reproductive aging and infertility.

Research Interests: Non-equilibrium thermodynamics, active matter, biophysics, synthetic biology, cytoskeletal mechanics.

Research Interests: Statistical mechanics of nonequilibrium systems; glass and jamming transitions in soft matter; computational biology; protein structure, interactions, and design.

Research Interests: Bacterial chemotaxis and biofilm formation in complex environments using both experiments and modeling.

Research Interests: Avian feather evolution; structural color; avian color vision; avian phylogenetics and behavioral evolution

Research Interests: RNA remodeling enzymes; RNA tertiary structure; molecular virology; computational studies of RNA structure

Research Interests: Imaging (including building microscopes), single-cell level experiments, mycobacterial infections, drivers of heterogeneity

Research Interests: Investigating topics at the interface of statistical inference, recurrent neural networks, control theory, and neuroscience

Research Interests: mathematical modeling, informed machine learning, cancer biology/disease biology, systems biology, synthetic biology

Research Interests: Membranes, phase separation, and regulation of immune signaling; single molecule imaging and cell engineering

Research Interests: Self-assembly and optical properties of molecular structures, biophysics, evolution of deep sea squid camouflage, combining theory with experiment

Research Interests: Systems and quantitative immunology; human immunology; single cell biology; predicting and modeling immune responses; synthetic immunology: predictive engineering of immune cell trafficking and sensing; immune homeostasis maintenance and set point establishment mechanisms; integrating dynamical modeling and machine learning to understand emergent immune system behavior across temporal and spatial scales.

Research Interests: Evolutionary genetics and genomics of microbes, experimental evolution, virus disease emergence and of virus evolvability, combining microbiology, computational biology, genomics, molecular biology and mathematical-modeling approaches

Research Interests: Machine Learning; Computational Biology; Genomics; Single-cell Analysis; Deep Learning; Computational Neuroscience; Machine Learning in biophysics and biochemistry

Research Interests: biomechanics and control of animal movement; muscle rheology and biophysics; inverse problems in elasticity and morphoelasticity.

Research Interests: Single cell oscillations and travelling waves, membrane curvature, mitosis, cell size

Research Interests: 3D volume electron microscopy, instrumentation development

Research Interests: Imaging and modeling the developmental process of bacterial communities, characterizing and understanding the soft matter properties of bacterial biofilms, designing new bioinspired materials and surfaces

Research Interests: Biomolecular interactions at interfaces; signal transduction across biomembranes; molecular mechanism of vision

Research Interests: Folding and assembly of proteins involved in membrane fusion; chromatin remodelers and ATP dependent translocases; single-molecule biophysics; optical tweezers

Research Interests: Computational vision, machine learning of neuroscience data, manifold inference and neural circuits.