This is a copy of old lab website from Columbia. Content is not updated since 2017. [New website]

Our lab endeavors to understand the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks. The molecular network needs to sense multiple signals from the environment, robustly process an appropriate cellular response and orchestrate the regulation of hundreds of genes and proteins to execute this response. This remarkable functionality occurs through diverse mechanisms including regulation of transcription, epigenetic changes, translation, degradation, post-translational signaling, and localization The advent of high throughput genomic and proteomic technologies is providing biology with an explosion of new experimental data, quantitatively measuring the molecular workings of the cell at a genome-wide scale.

Our lab develops computational methods to integrate diverse high throughput data and unravel a holistic systems level view of the cell. We elucidate the principles by which a cell robustly calculates a developmental decision or response to environmental stimuli. Some of the question we ask: How does this calculation differ between cell-type, individual and species? How does the network adapt its response to a series of stimuli and over the course of evolution? How do small changes to the regulatory network propagate and manifest in phenotypic diversity and changes to fitness? How does dysfunctional regulation lead to disease such as cancer?