Program Faculty

The program is comprised of faculty members from the Departments of Systems Biology (DSB), Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (BCMP), Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB), Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB), Cell Biology, Genetics, Physics and the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS). Current Program Members are listed below.

• Michael Brenner

  Professor of Applied Mathematics and of Applied Physics

  Quantitative modeling of complex phenomena in science and engineering. 

• Martha Bulyk

  Assistant Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Health Sciences & Technology

  Developing and applying genomic and proteomic technologies, as well as computational methods, for examining transcriptional regulatory networks in model organisms such as S. cerevisiae, and in higher eukaryotes such as fruit fly, mouse and human.

• Lewis Cantley

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Biochemical pathways that regulate normal mammalian cell growth and the defects that cause cell transformation; the structural basis for specificity in protein/protein interactions in signal transduction cascades that control cell growth and survival, in particular, the mechanism by which protein phosphorylation can control the assembly of signaling complexes.

• George Church

  Professor of Genetics

  New genomic and proteomic measurement tools and modeling methods for biomedical and ecological systems.

• Walter Fontana

  Professor of Systems Biology

  The Fontana Lab combines experimental and theoretical approaches to investigate:

  1. integration of biological information: plasticity & learning in intracellular networks;
  2. disintegration of biological information — the process of aging (C.elegans model);
  3. the evolution of biological information — evolvability of phenotype.

• Melissa Franklin

  Professor of Physics

  Professor Franklin’s interests in biology are recent and still developing. Her background is in high-energy particle physics.

• Jeremy Gunawardena

  Senior Lecturer in Systems Biology

  Studies signal transduction in mammalian cells, with the goal of characterizing the information processing tasks implemented by a signaling pathway and understanding how the molecular mechanisms in the pathway perform these tasks. Mechanisms for creating complex states (such as phosphorylation or scaffolding) are of particular interest.

• Marc Kirschner

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Studies cell morphogenesis, cell proliferation, and cell signaling by combining biochemical, cell biological, and embryological approaches.

• Roy Kishony

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Combines theoretical and experimental approaches to understand how biological function emerges in complex genetic and chemical networks. Uses population genetics approaches to understand the interplay between biological design and the evolutionary process.

• Galit Lahav

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Studies the temporal dynamics of biological signals in human cells and their control and consequences, by combining quantitative live imaging of single cells with mathematical modeling. Focuses on the signaling pathway of the tumor suppressor p53.

• Gavin MacBeath

  Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

  Systems-level investigation of protein-protein interactions in intracellular signaling networks using protein microarrays; emphasis on receptor-tyrosine-kinase mediated signaling and pre- and post-synaptic signaling.

• L. Mahadevan

  Professor of Applied Mathematics

  The applications of mathematics to understand the mechanical behavior of matter in all its forms, but with a particular emphasis on soft materials and biological systems.

• Christopher Marx

  Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

  Experimental evolution of microbes to address broad evolutionary and ecological questions and explore the systems-level function and optimization of complex biological networks.

• Tim Mitchison

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Cytoskeleton dynamics, in particular the mechanism of mitosis and the mechanism of cell motility dependent on actin polymerization.

• Vamsi Mootha

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Biochemical adaptation at the level of the mitochondrion, assessed through physiology, functional genomics (microarrays, proteomics), and computation; integration of genome-scale datasets to discover gene networks underlying rare and common human metabolic diseases biology.

• Andrew Murray

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Function and evolution of cells, using budding yeast as an experimental system. Transmission of genetic information during division and mating. Signal transduction in mating, cell polarization.

• Radhika Nagpal

  Assistant Professor of Computer Science

  Developing programming paradigms for robust collective behavior, inspired by biology; understanding robust collective behavior in biological systems.

• Martin Nowak

  Professor of Mathematics and of Biology - Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics

  Mathematical models of biological systems and evolutionary phenomena, including the evolution and proliferation of cancer and of HIV/AIDS.

• Erin O'Shea

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Systems level and molecular analysis of signaling pathways, transcriptional regulation, and developing methods for expressing and assaying the entire complement of proteins derived from an organism. Nutrient homeostasis in yeast.

• Kevin "Kit" Parker

  Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

  Cellular mechanotransduction in the heart; how extracellular matrix and cytoskeletal architecture potentiate and modulate the activation of mechanochemical and mechanoelectrical signaling pathways and genetic programs in cardiac cells and tissues. 

• Johan Paulsson

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Mathematical theory for noise in intracellular networks and the development of new experimental techniques for counting molecules in single cells. Combines theory and experiments in the study of e.g. stochastic gene expression, homeostatic control, near-critical metabolism and intracellular selfishness.

• Tom Rapoport

  Professor of Cell Biology

  Studies the mechanism by which proteins are transported across or inserted into the endoplasmic reticulum membrane in eukaryotes and the cytoplasmic membrane in bacteria, and theoretical approaches to understanding membrane compartmentalization.

• Brian Seed

  Professor of Cell Biology

  Automation and expression analysis techniques to uncover novel relationships between proteins in cellular signaling, with a particular emphasis on signaling in the immune system; approaches to simplify the creation of experimental systems, such as gene-targeted organisms; development of protein and small molecule therapeutics to treat human diseases.

• Jagesh Shah

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Uses a range of biochemical, microscopy and spectroscopy-based techniques to investigate protein function through complex formation, dynamics and localization in living cells. These data are then put together into kinetic computational models that attempt to approximate specific cellular functions and used to predict novel behaviors in silico. Currently studying the mitotic checkpoint and tubulin-based structures such as cilia and flagella.

• William Shih

  Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

  Explores the principles of self-assembling molecular machine design and evolution, using DNA nanostructures as tools for molecular and structural biology.

• Pamela Silver

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Systems analysis of genomes, RNA and nuclear organization; cell-based screens; synthetic biology.

• Peter Sorger

  Professor of Systems Biology

  The application of experimental and computational approaches to the analysis of chromosome segregation, genomic stability and programmed cell death in yeast, mice and human cells.

• Antoine van Oijen

  Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

  Single-molecule studies of complex multi-protein machineries. Current interests: DNA replication, viral fusion.

• David Weitz

  Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics

  Studies soft condensed matter physics, and applied physical methods to study the elastic properties of cells, both by creating in vitro model systems, and by developing techniques for in vivo studies of cells. The goal of the work is to understand the origin of force transduction in cells.

• Sunney Xie

  Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

  Single molecule spectroscopy and dynamics; molecular interaction and chemical dynamics in biological systems.

• Xiaowei Zhuang

  Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Physics

  Study of complex biological processes at the single molecule (or single working unit) level; development of new imaging techniques.