Research

Interdisciplinary Nature Enables Expanded Research Potential

WPI’s Bioinformatics & Computational Biology (BCB) program comprises multiple disciplines, and the research focus areas of our program are similarly varied and diverse. Working in state-of-the-art facilities like WPI’s Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at Gateway Park, our faculty and student researchers make groundbreaking discoveries at the intersection of Biology, Mathematics, and Computer Science.

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CONTACT
Location: Unity Hall
Phone: 508-831-5357
Fax: 508-831-5776

Research Area Focus

  • Clinical and health informatics
  • Combinatorics of sequences
  • Comparative genomics
  • Computational epidemiology
  • Data mining and machine learning of biological data
  • Data visualization
  • Genome-wide association studies
  • Mathematical biology
  • Simulation of biological systems
  • Structural bioinformatics
  • Systems and network biology                                                                                         

WPI Researcher Shares 3D Roadmap of Coronavirus with Scientists Worldwide

Researchers use Mixed Reality to Visualize Complex Biological Networks

Learn more about our fascinating research efforts and world-class faculty members involved in them:

Faculty Member Research Focus Areas

Emmanuel O. Agu

Website

Computer graphics, mobile computing, wireless networks, smartphones as healthcare delivery platform
Tanja Dominko Regenerative cell biology, stem cells, nuclear reprogramming, epigenetics, reproductive/developmental biology
Joseph B. Duffy Cancer biology/signal transduction, cancer therapeutics, cell adhesion mechanisms, neurodegenerative disorders

Mohamed Eltabakh

Website

Database management systems, information management

Lane Taylor Harrison

Website

Information visualization, visual analytics, human-computer interactions

Xiangnan Kong

Website

Data mining, social networks, machine learning, big data analytics, connectome
Dmitry Korkin Bioinformatics of disease, big data in biomedicine, computational genomics, systems biology, data mining, machine learning
Amity Manning Cancer cell biology, cell cycle regulation, mitotic progression and chromosome segregation, chromatin regulation, genome stability

William J. Martin

Website

Algebraic combinatorics, applied combinatorics

Sarah D. Olson

Website

Mathematical biology, chemical signaling, mechanics, hydrodynamics

Randy Paffenroth

Website

Large scale data analytics, statistical machine learning, compressed sensing, network analysis.
Samuel M. Politz Genetic control of surface glycoprotein expression in C. elegans, chemosensory control of nematode behavior and development, host immune responses to parasitic nematode infections

Reeta Prusty Rao

Website

Genomic studies and high throughput screening to understand and manage fungal diseases in humans

Carolina Ruiz

Website

Data mining, machine learning, artificial intelligence, biomedical data mining

Elke Rundensteiner

Website

Data and information management, big data analytics, visual data discovery, stream and pattern mining, large scale data infrastructures
Elizabeth F. Ryder Computational biology, simulation of biological systems, neurobiology

Brigitte Servatius

Website

Combinatorics, matroid and graph theory, structural topology, geometry, history and philosophy of mathematics
Scarlet Shell Bacterial pathogenesis, bacterial stress response, prokaryotic gene regulation, prokaryotic genomics and transcriptomics

Jagan Srinivasan

Website

Bacterial pathogenesis, bacterial stress response, prokaryotic gene regulation, prokaryotic genomics and transcriptomics

Dalin Tang

Website

Biofluids, biosolids, blood flow, mathematical modeling, numerical methods, scientific computing, nonlinear analysis, computational fluid dynamics
Erkan Tuzel Statistical mechanics and polymer physics applied to biology and materials science

Luis Vidali

Website

Plant cell biology and molecular genetics, live cell microscopy, molecular motors/cytoskeleton

Zheyang Wu

Website

Biostatistics, high-dimensional model selection, linear and generalized linear modeling, statistical genetics, bioinformatics

Jian Zou

Website

Financial time series, spatial statistics, biosurveillance, high dimensional statistical inference, Bayesian statistics

State-of-the-Art Facilities Enhance Research and Learning

BCB faculty and students benefit from access to diverse resources available through participating academic departments, the campus computation center, and the research laboratories at Gateway Park, as well as University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Grid and cloud computing, along with high-speed networking, provide substantial computational infrastructure. Students and researchers can tap into most major biological databases, and a wide range of bioinformatics software packages are installed and maintained. Wet labs at the Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center at Gateway Park and University of Massachusetts Medical School are also available for use.