Aims

• Research: to understand in a quantitative and predictive way the complex patterns and organization that arise in living organisms at length scales from molecular to organism.

• Education: to prepare undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral students for the challenges of twenty-first century biology, which require a merging of fundamental biological understanding and methods with physical, computational, and mathematical approaches.

• Communication: to improve communication between biological, mathematical and physical scientists.

• Software and resources: to develop techniques and tools of broad utility to bioscientists and to distribute these freely to the community at large.

Research

Our long-term goal is to develop comprehensive multiscale models of cell and tissue organization and their relation to development. We address three scales of structure starting from the level of genetic control networks and including at the subcellular level, molecular machines and cytoskeletal and protein networks. At the cell level we emphasize cell polarity and cell-cell interactions. At the supercellular level our studies include the aggregation of cells into tissues and tissues into organs.

All projects combine quantitative experiments and computer simulation and build on the mutually complementary strength of the researchers at Notre Dame with support from our collaborators at other institutions.

• Modeling Cellular Dynamic, including the mechanical properties of cells.

• Modeling Organogenesis and Tissue Development including the mechanical properties of tissues.