Speaker
Description
My research is focused on the mathematical and computational modeling of cell regulatory processes. We and others have developed an approach to modeling the reaction kinetics of biochemical systems that allows detailed knowledge about protein-protein interactions to be encoded as rules that generalize the standard reaction network formulation and enables the building, simulation, and analysis of models in a scalable and precise manner. Using this rule-based approach, we developed foundational models of early events in immunoreceptor and growth factor signaling that allowed us to investigate the mechanistic roles of specific interaction domains and phosphorylation sites. My group currently leads the development of widely-used software tools that enable rule-based modeling, and we develop models employing these methods across a wide range of biological processes including immune signaling, viral replication dynamics, and signaling pathways in cancer. In each of these applications a significant focus of our work is on the development of novel drug combinations and other intervention strategies to treat human disease.
