Systems, Synthetic, and Computational Bioengineering

Research groups in systems, synthetic, and computational bioengineering apply engineering principles to model and understand complex biological systems, including differentiation and development, pathogenesis and cancer, and learning and behavior. This involves designing and implementing methods for procuring quantitative and sometimes very large data sets, as well as developing theoretical models and computational tools for interpreting these data.

Deciphering the workings of a biological system allows us to identify potential biomarkers and drug targets, to develop protocols for personalized medicine, and more. In addition, we use the design principles of biological systems we discover to engineer and refine new synthetic biological systems for clinical, agricultural, environmental, and energy applications.

Primary faculty contacts

Saeed Amal

Assistant Research Professor

Artificial Intelligent including Deep Learning and Machine Learning for Healthcare, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Image Processing for Healthcare, Recommender Systems for Healthcare

Erel Levine

Associate Professor

Statistical and machine learning approaches to biological data; Gut-brain-microbe interactions; multi-cellular synthetic biology

Herbert Levine

University Distinguished Professor

Theoretical approaches to the functional behavior of living systems. Cell signaling and cell motility. Cancer metastasis and the cancer-immune interaction. Drug resistance and epigenetics.

Elizabeth Libby

Assistant Professor

Synthetic biology, protein engineering, microbiology, and cell signaling

Mingyang Lu

Assistant Professor

Computational systems biology, gene regulatory networks, single cell genomics

Mona Minkara

Assistant Professor

Computational prediction of molecular interactions at biological interfaces

Nikolai Slavov

Associate Professor

Single-cell proteomics and analysis, cell signaling, systems biology

Eduardo Sontag

University Distinguished Professor

Feedback control theory, systems biology, cancer, and biomedicine

Kiran Vanaja

Assistant Research Professor

Systems biology of signaling networks in cancer (and) therapeutics, metastasis and embryonic development

Raimond Winslow

Professor

Computational modeling of the cardiac myocyte to understand the molecular basis of arrhythmias; machine learning in critical care medicine to identify those patients who require urgent care