Program Faculty

The program is comprised of faculty members from Systems Biology, Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology (BCMP), Molecular and Cellular Biology (MCB), Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB), Cell Biology, Genetics, Physics and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). Current Program Members are listed below.

• Debra Auguste

  Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

  The Auguste lab focuses on the design of (1) new biomaterials for controlling molecule release, immune response, and cellular targeting and (2) cellular microenvironments that direct the behavior and differentiation of human embryonic stem cells.

• Michael Brenner

  Professor of Applied Mathematics and of Applied Physics

  Quantitative modeling of complex phenomena in science and engineering. 

• Martha Bulyk

  Associate Professor of Medicine, Pathology, and Health Sciences & Technology. Associate Member of the Broad Institute

  Developing and applying genomic and proteomic technologies, as well as computational methods, for examining transcriptional regulatory networks in model organisms such as S. cerevisiae, and in higher eukaryotes such as fruit fly, mouse and human.

• Lewis Cantley

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Biochemical pathways that regulate normal mammalian cell growth and the defects that cause cell transformation; the structural basis for specificity in protein/protein interactions in signal transduction cascades that control cell growth and survival, in particular, the mechanism by which protein phosphorylation can control the assembly of signaling complexes.

• George Church

  Professor of Genetics

  New genomic and proteomic measurement tools and modeling methods for biomedical and ecological systems.

• Adam Cohen

  Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Physics

  We invent, build, and apply new physical tools for studying biological molecules and systems.  Most of our tools combine nanofabrication, optics, microfluidics, and electronics. We also develop theoretical tools for extracting meaning from our data.

• Angela DePace

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Our work is focused on two parallel questions: How do collections of transcription factor binding sites integrate information to produce gene expression patterns? And how do cis-regulatory elements and their associated expression patterns evolve? We focus on the early development of multiple Drosophila species, and integrate a wide variety of experimental and computational approaches.

• Catherine Dulac

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Exploring the molecular logic of olfactory signaling underlying the coding of odorant- and pheromone-mediated signals and studying the developmental processes that ensure appropriate neuronal connections between the olfactory sensory neurons and the brain.

• Walter Fontana

  Professor of Systems Biology

  The Fontana lab combines experimental and theoretical approaches to address fundamental problems in systems biology as they relate to aging (C.elegans), plasticity in molecular signaling, and the evolvability of phenotype.

• Melissa Franklin

  Professor of Physics

  Melissa Franklin is an experimental particle physicist who has been working on the Collider Detector at Fermilab, an experiment designed generally to study the collisions of protons and anti-protons at the highest energies currently possible.

• Jeremy Gunawardena

  Senior Lecturer in Systems Biology

  Studies signal transduction in mammalian cells, with the goal of characterizing the information processing tasks implemented by a signaling pathway and understanding how the molecular mechanisms in the pathway perform these tasks. Mechanisms for creating complex states (such as phosphorylation or scaffolding) are of particular interest.

• Marc Kirschner

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Studies cell morphogenesis, cell proliferation, and cell signaling by combining biochemical, cell biological, and embryological approaches.

• Roy Kishony

  Associate Professor of Systems Biology

  Combines theoretical and experimental approaches to understand how biological function emerges in complex genetic and chemical networks. Uses population genetics approaches to understand the interplay between biological design and the evolutionary process.

• Galit Lahav

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Studies the temporal dynamics of biological signals in human cells and their control and consequences, by combining quantitative live imaging of single cells with mathematical modeling. Focuses on the signaling pathway of the tumor suppressor p53.

• Richard Losick

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Professor Losick seeks to elucidate the regulatory network that governs the conversion of a growing cell into a spore in the bacterium Bacillus subtilis. This developmental process is orchestrated by the programmed expression of over five hundred genes and involves multiple, novel signal transduction pathways, a bistable switch and dynamic changes in the subcellular localization of regulatory and morphogenetic proteins. 

• Gavin MacBeath

  Associate Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

  Systems-level investigation of protein-protein interactions in intracellular signaling networks using protein microarrays; emphasis on receptor-tyrosine-kinase mediated signaling and pre- and post-synaptic signaling.

• L. Mahadevan

  Professor of Applied Mathematics

  The applications of mathematics to understand the mechanical behavior of matter in all its forms, but with a particular emphasis on soft materials and biological systems.

• Christopher Marx

  Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

  Experimental evolution of microbes to address broad evolutionary and ecological questions and explore the systems-level function and optimization of complex biological networks.

• Sean Megason

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  The Megason lab is interested in how the program contained in the genome is executed during development to turn an egg into an embryo. We use confocal/2-photon imaging of living, transgenic zebrafish embryos to watch biological circuits function in vivo and use these data in cell-based, quantitative modeling.

• Tim Mitchison

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Cytoskeleton dynamics, in particular the mechanism of mitosis and the mechanism of cell motility dependent on actin polymerization.

• Vamsi Mootha

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Biochemical adaptation at the level of the mitochondrion, assessed through physiology, functional genomics (microarrays, proteomics), and computation; integration of genome-scale datasets to discover gene networks underlying rare and common human metabolic diseases biology.

• Andrew Murray

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Function and evolution of cells, using budding yeast as an experimental system. Transmission of genetic information during division and mating. Signal transduction in mating, cell polarization.

• Radhika Nagpal

  Assistant Professor of Computer Science

  Developing programming paradigms for robust collective behavior, inspired by biology; understanding robust collective behavior in biological systems.

• Dan Needleman

  Assistant Professor of Applied Physics and of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Combining quantitative experiments and theory to understand the architecture and dynamics of self-organizing, subcellular structures, particularly the metaphase spindle.

• Martin Nowak

  Professor of Mathematics and of Biology - Director of the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics

  Mathematical models of biological systems and evolutionary phenomena, including the evolution and proliferation of cancer and of HIV/AIDS.

• Erin O'Shea

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

  Systems level and molecular analysis of signaling pathways, transcriptional regulation, and developing methods for expressing and assaying the entire complement of proteins derived from an organism. Nutrient homeostasis in yeast.

• Kevin "Kit" Parker

  Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

  Cellular mechanotransduction in the heart; how extracellular matrix and cytoskeletal architecture potentiate and modulate the activation of mechanochemical and mechanoelectrical signaling pathways and genetic programs in cardiac cells and tissues. 

• Johan Paulsson

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Mathematical theory for noise in intracellular networks and the development of new experimental techniques for counting molecules in single cells. Combines theory and experiments in the study of e.g. stochastic gene expression, homeostatic control, near-critical metabolism and intracellular selfishness.

• Sharad Ramanathan

  Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Applied Physics

  The research in our lab is directed towards answering two questions: How do cells and organisms process signals from their environment? and How do the underlying molecular pathways evolve?

• Aviv Regev

  Assistant Professor of Biology at MIT and Member of the Broad Institute

  Understanding the mechanisms by which molecular networks accommodate changes at different time scales.

• Fritz Roth

  Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry & Molecular Pharmacology

  Using large-scale experiments to understand phenotype and human disease.

• Pardis Sabeti

  Assistant Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology

  Pardis Sabeti's lab aims to study the effect of natural selection on the human genome and on the genomes of other organisms and uncover the traits that have emerged to shape these species, and to understand mechanisms of evolutionary adaptation in humans and pathogens.

• Alan Saghatelian

  Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

  The development and application of LC-MS based metabolomics approaches to study basic as well as biomedical problems in biology.

• Alexander Schier

  Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology

  Professor Schier’s research focuses on three areas: (i) Vertebrate embryogenesis - how do signals influence the fate and movement of cells?(ii) Sensory neuron development and function - how does an organism sense potentially harmful stimuli? (iii) Sleep and wakefulness - what are the genes and circuits that regulate sleep?

• Brian Seed

  Professor of Genetics

  Automation and expression analysis techniques to uncover novel relationships between proteins in cellular signaling, with a particular emphasis on signaling in the immune system; approaches to simplify the creation of experimental systems, such as gene-targeted organisms; development of protein and small molecule therapeutics to treat human diseases.

• Jagesh Shah

  Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

  Uses a range of biochemical, microscopy and spectroscopy-based techniques to investigate protein function through complex formation, dynamics and localization in living cells. These data are then put together into kinetic computational models that attempt to approximate specific cellular functions and used to predict novel behaviors in silico. Currently studying the mitotic checkpoint and tubulin-based structures such as cilia and flagella.

• William Shih

  Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

  Explores the principles of self-assembling molecular machine design and evolution, using DNA nanostructures as tools for molecular and structural biology.

• Pamela Silver

  Professor of Systems Biology

  Systems analysis of genomes, RNA and nuclear organization; cell-based screens; synthetic biology.

• Peter Sorger

  Professor of Systems Biology

  The application of experimental and computational approaches to the analysis of chromosome segregation, genomic stability and programmed cell death in yeast, mice and human cells.

• Jack Szostak

  Professor of Genetics

  The Szostak lab applies Darwinian principles to study macromolecules and membrane vesicles in order to understand the origins and early evolution of life.  We are interested in exploring a variety of nucleic acid analogs as candidates for replicating elements in a protocell that can undergo Darwinian evolution.

• Antoine van Oijen

  Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

  Single-molecule studies of complex multi-protein machineries. Current interests: DNA replication, viral fusion.

• Ralph Weissleder

  Professor of Systems Biology

  One of the major research interests has been the development of novel molecular imaging tools to the study of complex human diseases. He has made fundamental discoveries in early disease detection, development of nanomaterials for sensing and systems analysis.

• David Weitz

  Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics

  Studies soft condensed matter physics, and applied physical methods to study the elastic properties of cells, both by creating in vitro model systems, and by developing techniques for in vivo studies of cells. The goal of the work is to understand the origin of force transduction in cells.

• Sunney Xie

  Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology

  Single molecule spectroscopy and dynamics; molecular interaction and chemical dynamics in biological systems.

• Xiaowei Zhuang

  Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and of Physics

  Study of complex biological processes at the single molecule (or single working unit) level; development of new imaging techniques.