Research Areas

Nucleic Acid Structure and Function: DNA structural transitions and applications to initiation of transcription, replication, recombination, and repair; DNA electrostatics in ionic solutions. (Benson) 

Protein Structure and Function: Analysis of protein sequences and structures; Studies of protein folding processes; Conformational energy calculations for structural proteins; NMR spectrum analysis. (Rackovsky) 

Membrane Biophysics: Thermodynamics of lipid self-association; Structural transitions in lipid membranes; Membrane defects and permeability; Distribution of components in
biological membranes.

Computer Science: Sequence alignment; Detection of sequence patterns and protein-DNA binding sites; Phylogenetic trees; Studies related to biological sequence and genome data analysis. (Benson) 

Biological Applications of Dynamical Systems: Pattern formation in reaction-diffusion systems; Modeling signal and wave propagation in biological systems; Application of fractional reaction-diffusion systems to inhomogenous, irregular and complex biological media. (Wearne) 

Biostatistics: Statistical methods for censored survival data; Combinatorics of experimental design; Design and analysis of clinical and laboratory studies; Longitudinal data analysis.

Epidemiology: Infectious and non-infectious diseases, including AIDS, cancer, and Alzheimer's Disease; Familial genetic studies; Disease clustering and cohort studies. (Sacks)

Clinical Trials: Survival analysis; Sample size estimation; Meta-analysis. (Sacks)

Computational Neuroscience: Single neuron modeling; relating local and global neuronal geometry and topology to neural firing patterns, biochemical signaling and synaptic plasticity; biophysical modeling of neuronal integration and working memory. (Wearne) 

Neural Modeling: Dynamics of interacting populations of neurons; Simulation of the visual pathway by dynamical systems; Modeling the architecture of the primary visual cortex by minimizing the cost of intracortical wiring. (Sirovich)

Image Analysis and Medical Imaging: Mathematical techniques for extraction of small signals in optical imaging; 3D analysis, reconstruction and visualization of fine neuronal structure from laser-scanning microscopy images; Analysis of functional MRI, ECG, and other medical imaging datasets. (Sirovich, Wearne)