Researchers

Bob Dennis

Morgan Giddings

Shawn Gomez

David Lalush

Elizabeth Loboa

Jeff Macdonald

Terry Magnuson

Gregory McCarty

Alex Tropsha

Glenn Walker

Core faculty research efforts in Bioinformatics and functional genomics take a new molecular perspective on biomedical engineering disciplines. Projects involve measuring and modeling molecular properties in vivo, ex vivo, and in culture, and studying the interaction between technology and genome. Dr. Bob Dennis is the director of the Tissue Engineering Systems Laboratory. His research focuses on functional tissue engineering, bioreactor design, self-organizing living systems, biomechantronics, biomedical systems design, and rapid manufacturing. Dr. Shawn Gomez's research is in the general area of systems biology with current emphasis on the development and application of computational techniques for modeling and understanding biological processes. Dr. David Lalush’s research interests includetomographic molecular imaging and bioinformatics of gene expression related to molecular imaging. Dr. Elizabeth Loboa's work involves the investigation of key genes of interest that are expressed during mechanobiological regulation of human mesenchymal stem cell differentiation. Dr. Jeffrey Macdonald is the Scientific Director of the newly formed Metabolomic Core Facility. He collaborates with theoretical systems biologist and develops empirical models of disease and drug toxicity using tissue engineered tissue models and whole organisms. Dr. Glenn Walker is pursuing high throughput/parallel microscale cell/tissue cultures for toxicology screening bio-microelectromechanical systems (bioMEMS), microfluidics, and lab-on-a-chip systems. Finally, Dr. Terry Magnuson focuses on Genomics with interest in chromatin, epigenetics, development, and cancer. Dr. Gregory McCarty explores high throughput or ultrasensitive detection schemes and techniques for fabricating structure on the nanometer scale with hopes of enabling low-cost DNA microarrays.

In addition to the core faculty members, Affiliated faculty are also actively involved in bioinformatics research. Dr. Morgan Giddings’ research is focused on bioinformatics and microbial proteomics. Dr. Alexander Tropsha is interested in computer-assisted drug design, combinational chemistry, molecular dynamics and free-energy simulations, protein structure analysis and prediction.