Program Faculty
New participating faculty members have joined the
training program to broaden the scope of the training program and to replace
those who either left UCLA or retired. The current 36 participating faculties
cover a wide range of biomedical research areas.
Molecular/Cellular
Modeling/Biophysics
Tom Chou (Biomathematics,
Mathematics, Physics) studies modeling techniques to explain various biophysical
phenomena based on fundamental principles in physics and chemistry. Topics of
recent interest include statistical mechanics of protein aggregation, proteinmembrane interactions, stochastic processes in
reaction kinetics, branching processes in the cell cycle, cancer modeling,
physicochemical hydrodynamics, image segmentation, and mathematical modeling in
ophthalmology.
Alexander
Levine (Physics,
Chemistry) is trained in
theoretical soft-condensed matter physics. He develops new models in microrheology, protein mechanics, cell cytoskeleton
dynamics, polymer physics, and network dynamics in neuroscience.
Marcus Roper (Mathematics) studies fluid mechanics of biological organisms, particularly fungi. He
teaches classical applied mathematical modeling in fluid and solid mechanics.
His research and teaching areas are highly valuable to the mathematical
modeling missions of the SIB training grant.
William
Gelbart (Chemistry, Biochemistry) is an expert in the statistical mechanics of
"complex" fluids. He is also interested in applying the knowledge
associated with statistical mechanics to understand the molecular-level
biochemical phenomena of reactions in biological systems.
Dan Kamei (Biochemistry) is an Associate Professor in Bioengineering. His
research interest is in system-level/engineering analysis of cellular
processes. He also performs quantitative cell biology experiments to test model
predictions, design drug delivery vehicles, and develop novel diagnostics.
Julio Vergara (Physiology) works on using calcium ion spot detection and pulse laser imaging to
study excitation-contraction (E-C) coupling in vertebrate skeletal muscle and
its relevance to the regulation of neuronal synaptic transmission. In the Cell
Physiology Imaging Group, with which he is associated, new imaging techniques
with improved temporal and spatial resolution are being developed. Through
optical imaging, new insights have been obtained on the role of the membrane
potential of the T-tubule, and possible chemical transmitters, in transduction
at the T-SR junction.
Ernest Wright (Physiology) studies structure and function of co-transporters. His research is
focused on understanding how ion gradients drive the accumulation of various
substrates, peptides and neurotransmitters in cells. Studies to link gene
mutation to defects in SGLT transporters and then use PET imaging to examine
functional changes are among his recent research interests.
Ren Sun (Molecular and Medical Pharmacology) is a member of the Molecular Biology Institute, the
AIDS Institute, the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer
Center, the Dental Research Institute, and the California NanoSystems
Institute. His research is on various tumor-associated herpesviruses.
He also works on the modeling of the systems biology network relating drug
levels to the switch-on/off of herpesvirus.
Physiology/Systems Modeling
Joe
DiStefano (Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Medicine) is Director of the Biocybernetics
Teaching and Experimental Laboratory. He has used mathematical modeling methods
to study the regulation of thyroid hormone and has developed many important
modeling techniques. His current research interests include pharmacokinetic and
dynamic systems modeling and optimization, compartmental modeling, signaling
and receptor models, endocrine system physiology and control, and optimal
kinetic experimental design.
Alan Garfinkel (Physiological Sciences, Medicine) has been using mathematical modeling techniques to
explain cardiac arrhythmias. He is a leader in this field. His general research
interests include mathematical modeling of cellular and tissue
electrophysiology, analysis of data from experimental and clinical arrhythmias
using techniques of nonlinear dynamics (chaos theory), and development of
pharmacologic and electrophysiologic interventions to
prevent and control arrhythmias.
Thomas Graeber (Molecular and Medical Pharmacology,
ACCESS) studies systems biology of cancer signaling and metabolism. He is an American Cancer Society Research Scholar. He is working on developing genome-, proteome-, and metabolome-wide detection assays to measure and model aberrant cancer signaling and metabolism. One of his research aims is to identify the minimal sets of informative components that best reflect the state of the cell.
Elliot
Landaw (Biomathematics) is Vice-Chair of the Biomathematics Department. He is
well known for his work in pharmacokinetic and compartmental modeling and
optimal experimental design. His research interests include modeling approaches
for optimization of chemotherapy and assessing in vivo combination therapy and
applications in clinical pharmacokinetics.
Jamie Lloyd-Smith (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Is the De Logi Chair in
Biological Sciences and received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from UC Berkeley. He
studies the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of infectious disease in
animal and human populations. By combining theoretical models with data, he
aims to discover fundamental principles of disease transmission and adaptation,
identify driving mechanisms, and design effective control policies. His work
includes California sea lions, monkeypox in humans
and wildlife in central Africa, and SARS and other emerging diseases in humans.
Amy Rowat (Integrative Biology and Physiology) has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of
Southern Denmark. Her research links the mechanics of biological materials to
their physiology, with a current emphasis on the cell nucleus, which is central
to genome integrity, gene expression, and mechanobiology.
She explores the structure and organization of the nucleus at multiple levels,
from the origins of nuclear shape to subnuclear
structure and dynamics, and the resulting consequences for cellular physiology.
Her approach is multidisciplinary and includes the development and application
of new technologies to connect molecular-scale composition and genotype with
biophysical phenotype.
Van Savage (Biomathematics, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology) is developing new models for tumor growth that can
connects properties of vascular architecture, the process of angiogenesis, host
capillary density, blood supply, and cellular metabolic rate. Savage also works
closely with Dan Ennis, a participating member from the Department of
Radiology, to develop software for the automated extraction of 3D vessel
geometry from MRI and CT scans across length scales in the vascular system. Moreover,
Savage has helped develop models and novel tests using empirical data for the
function and duration of sleep as well as cell size and the rate of evolution
for species, including collaborations with multiple members of the Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology Department.
Genetics/Molecular Phylogeny
James Lake (Molecular, Cellular &
Developmental Biology, Human Genetics) directs a laboratory focusing on genomics and evolution of early life
forms. The lab is analyzing sequence information with the goal of understanding
the origins of eukaryotes from prokaryotes and the separation of the deurterostome (vertebrate and echinoderms, for example)
from the protostome (fruit flies and clams, for example). His lab is also
working on the comparative analysis of systemic blocks common to the genomes of
closely related organisms, such as those found in humans and mice. This aids in
the identification of gene boundaries, open reading frames, and the
interpretation of gene organization.
Steve
Horvath (Human
Genetics, Biostatistics) works on the analysis of DNA and tissue microarray
data. His research interests include family-based allelic association tests for
finding complex disease genes, tissue microarray data, weighed gene
co-expression networks, and systems biology.
Christina Ramirez Kitchen (Biostatistics) works on
gene mutation and drug resistance. She uses molecular sequence data and phylogenetics to study pathogenesis in HIV/AIDS. She has
developed semi-parametric techniques to infer relationships between genotype
and phenotype.
Kenneth
Lange (Biomathematics,
Human Genetics, Statistics) is Chair of the Human Genetics Department. His
research interests include human genetics, population biology, computational
statistics, and applied stochastic processes. He has worked on problems of
linkage and radiation hybrid mapping, risk prediction in genetic counseling,
genetic epidemiology, and forensic uses of DNA profiling. These areas tie in
well with his activities in computational statistics and highlight his
contributions to the computation of complex probabilities on human pedigrees.
Dr. Lange has also made important contributions to medical image
reconstruction. He is a pioneer in the use of the EM algorithm for statistical
reconstruction of tomographic images. His former students, Neil Risch, Michael Boehnke, Daniel
Weeks, Laura Lazzeroni, and Eric Sobel
are leading figures in statistical genetics.
Janet
Sinsheimer (Human Genetics, Biomathematics, Biostatistics) is Chair of the Department of Biomathematics. She works on Bayesian techniques for reconstructing
evolutionary trees from molecular data. She has applied these phylogenetic
methods to determining the rate of evolution of HIV, to the clinical
identification of microbial pathogens, and to understanding the genes
determining sex in mammals. She is also deeply involved in statistical
genetics, both at the theoretical and practical levels. She is a co-developer
of the gamete competition model and a statistical collaborator on studies of
osteoporosis, osteoarthritis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism,
and schizophrenia.
Marc Suchard (Human Genetics, Biomathematics, Biostatistics) uses biomathematical and
computational approaches to analyze stochastic processes in molecular sequence
data and develop longitudinal models of biomedical processes. He is helping
develop the nascent field of evolutionary medicine which harnesses the power of
methods and theory from evolutionary biology and phylogenetics
to advance our understanding of human disease processes, particularly in the
study of rapidly evolving pathogens. He received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship,
the 2011 Raymond J. Carroll Young Investigator Award and became a Fellow of the
American Statistical Association in 2012.
Eleazar Eskin (Computer
Science, Bioinformatics) focuses on developing techniques for solving the
challenging computational problems that arise in attempting to understand the
genetic basis of human disease. Current projects include complex traits in
inbred mouse strains, the genetics of gene expression and developing webservers
for genetic research. Eskin received a 2009 Sloan
Fellowship.
Population Modeling/Evolution
John Novembre (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) is an Assistant Professor whose research interests
are at the interface of population genetics and computational statistics. His
focus is developing and evaluating statistical methods for genomic-scale
population genetic data to investigate questions in evolutionary genetics.
Applications in the study of relatedness among populations include detecting
natural selection, genome-wide association mapping, understanding population
history, personal ancestry inference in humans, and conservation genetics. He
became an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 2012.
Priyanga Amarasekare (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) is a Professor whose research focuses on mechanisms
that maintain biological diversity in variable environments. She uses both
ecology and evolution to effectively combine and interpret her field
observations, experiments, and mathematical models. By focusing on prey-natural
enemy interactions, her work spans both basic and applied issues.
Charles Taylor (Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) is Professor in the Department of Ecology and
Evolutionary Biology. His research interests are in population genetics and
artificial life. They involve two general themes: developing techniques that
will extend the study of evolution beyond the traditional domain of biological
evolution to complex adaptive systems (e.g., artificial life systems, including
robots), and applying new methods of computer simulations to help manage
problems in ecology and evolution.
Biomedical Imaging and Imaging
Science
Mark Cohen (Neurology) is Director of Functional MR Imaging of Ahmanson-Lovelace Brain Mapping
Center, and is a leading expert in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). His
current research interests include rapid MR imaging, real-time imaging of brain
function, integration of EEG and functional MRI, and neural processes
underlying mental imagery.
Paul
Thompson (Neurology) is a member of the UCLA Brain Mapping Center. He
has developed novel mathematical methods for analyzing brain images for
detecting pathology and for creating disease-specific atlases of the human
brain. His recent work has focused on mapping dynamic processes during brain
development and degeneration, on brain mapping in Alzheimer's Disease, schizophrenia and neurooncology,
and on creating population-based digital brain atlases.
Henry Huang (Molecular & Medical Pharmacology,
Biomathematics) is Director of the Image Analysis Center in the
School of Medicine. He has worked on tracer kinetic modeling of many PET
tracers, and has combined modeling of biological process with
physical/mathematical factors in imaging to provide quantitative biological
information from PET imaging studies. He has ongoing collaborations with many
faculty members in mathematical and biomedical specialties at UCLA. His
research interest includes tomographic image reconstruction and tracer kinetic
modeling for quantitative biomedical imaging.
Michael Phelps (Molecular & Medical Pharmacology,
Biomathematics) is Chair of the Department of Molecular and Medical
Pharmacology. He is the co-inventor of positron emission tomography (PET) and
has made many important contributions to neurology, cardiology, and oncology
with the use of PET. His work has led to the routine clinical use of PET for diagnosis
of many diseases, including screening for tumor and its metastasis. His recent
efforts in developing new imaging techniques for small animals to address
biological problems and to develop/assess new drugs have created a completely
new field of molecular imaging.
Arion
Chatziioannou (Molecular
& Medical Pharmacology) is Professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology and
is the Associate Director of the Crump Institute for Biological Imaging in
CNSI. He has developed many novel modalities for small animal imaging and for
measuring the tracer kinetics in vitro cell lines, and has worked with various
biologists and physicians to investigate various biological processes,
especially as related to tumors.
Mike
McNitt-Gray (Radiological Sciences, Biomedical Physics) s a Professor
in the Radiological Science Department and is the Director of the Biomedical
Physics (BMP) graduate program in the medical school. He has worked on the
evaluation and characterization of x-ray CT imaging and their various
medical/clinical applications. He also has established good relationships with
CT companies and has trained numerous graduate students in BMP.
Dan
Ennis (Radiological
Sciences) is interested
in extracting 3D vasculature signature to differentiate healthy from diseased
tissue. He also collaborates with Professor Van Savage to develop software for
the automated extraction of 3D vessel geometry from MRI and CT scans.
Modeling in Clinical/Translational
Research
Robert
Elashoff (Biomathematics, Biostatistics) is Vice Chair of Biomathematics and Director of six
NIH funded Data and Statistical Coordinating Units. His research interests
focus on 1) joint modeling of biomarkers, event times, nonignorable
dropouts using both frequentist and Bayesian
approaches; 2) composite indices for clinical trials; 3) model-based designs
for adaptive clinical trials; and 4) jump regression.
Christian
Schiepers (Nuclear
Medicine) is a Professor
of the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology. He is an attending
physician in Nuclear Medicine. He has been working on characterizing the
kinetics of various radiotracers using compartmental models to differentiate
tissues of different pathologies using PET. His research interest is in the
application of quantitative imaging and tracer kinetic modeling in the clinical
setting.
Zhilin Qu (Cardiology) is an Associate Professor of Medicine and
co-director of the Cardiac Computation Laboratory. His research interests in
computational biology center on using mathematical modeling and computer
simulation to study the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias, cell cycle control,
and the dynamics of biological signal transduction. He applies dynamical theory
at the systems level to address clinical problems in the multi-scale modeling
of excitation-contraction coupling and arrhythmias (such as ventricular
fibrillation) and in understanding the complex network involved in cardiac
metabolism.
James
Weiss (Cardiology) is Professor of Medicine and Physiology, Chief of
the Division of Cardiology, and Director of the Cardiovascular Research
Laboratory. His research focuses on ion channel biophysics, cardiac
electrophysiology, arrhythmias, and ischemia and mitochondrial biology. His
research group spans the range from basic sciences to clinical applications and
uses systems approaches integrating experimental biology at the molecular to
organ level with mathematical modeling to investigate arrhythmias, ischemia
biology and cardioprotection.