Professor Duffy is the head of the Biology and Biotechnology Department. His research centers around defining signaling pathways that program cellular diversity, in fact, he calls it one of the foremost problems in biology. His lab uses molecular, genetic, and biochemical approaches to characterize the function of these pathways and to gain insight into their role in disease. To date, the lab has focused on the Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor network, a principal therapeutic target for a variety of human cancers. This work involved the characterization of Kekkon1 (Kek1), an archetypal LIG molecule, as a novel feedback inhibitor of the EGFR network. More recent work has branched out to neurobiology, adhesion/barrier biology, and lipid metabolism.