Mechanistic Insights Into Parkinson’s Disease and Sex Differences in Liver Oxidative Stress In volume transmission, or neuromodulation, neurons communicate not through direct, one-to-one synaptic connections, but by releasing neurotransmitters broadly into the extracellular space from numerous varicosities. This type of signaling is particularly relevant for serotonin and dopamine neurons, which project from the dorsal raphe …
Engineering ovarian cancer solutions using evolutionary medicine, math modeling, and big data Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecologic cancer despite the progress we’ve made in personalized medicine; there has only been modest survival gains for ovarian cancer patients with over 80% of patients experiencing recurrent disease. Furthermore, many current clinical trials often fail to …
Adaptive Dynamics on High-Dimensional Optimization Random Landscapes What do spin glasses (a subfield of high-dimensional probability and statistical physics), evolutionary biology, and artificial intelligence (AI) have in common? All involve optimization on rugged landscapes where metastable states pose significant challenges to the search for optima. In this talk, I will discuss an example of such …
Do higher-order interactions promote coexistence in diverse ecological communities? From the human microbiome to the Amazon rainforest, diverse ecological communities are widespread in the natural world, but we do not know how this diversity is maintained by the interactions between species. A central assumption in most ecological models is that the interactions in a community …
Network Architecture Dictates Dynamics: Operating Principles of Interconnected Feedback Loops in Cell Fate Transitions Interconnected feedback loops are prevalent in cell fate transitions, yet their operating principles remain largely unexplored. In this talk, we will examine high-dimensional feedback loops (HDFLs) organized into serial, hub, and cyclic network architectures. We will see that network architecture dictates …
Systems-Level Mapping of the Tumor Microenvironment in Platinum-Resistant Ovarian Cancer Ovarian cancer remains the most lethal gynecologic cancer, with limited improvements in patient survival despite advances in personalized medicine and a high rate of recurrence (~80%). Current standard-of-care involves platinum-based chemotherapy, but the emergence of resistant clones limits long-term efficacy. Existing models often overlook critical …
A Universal Description of Stochastic Oscillators Many systems in physics, chemistry and biology exhibit oscillations with a pronounced random component. Such stochastic oscillations can emerge via different mechanisms, for example linear dynamics of a stable focus with fluctuations, limit-cycle systems perturbed by noise, or excitable systems in which random inputs lead to a train of …
Mathematical modeling of spatial evolution with applications to cancer Evolutionary dynamics permeates life and life-like systems. Mathematical methods can be used to study evolutionary processes, such as selection, mutation, and drift, and to make sense of many phenomena in life sciences. In this talk I will discuss how spatial interactions may change the laws of …
Geometric Mechanisms of Temporal Variability and Precision in Transient Biological Dynamics Understanding transient temporal effects—when events occur and how variable their timing is—represents a central challenge across biological systems. While traditional analyses often focus on steady-state behaviors and average frequencies, the response variability and timing precision observed in real biological systems demand a deeper understanding …
