About Us

Dr. Akçay studies the theory of social evolution in context ranging from microbial ecology to human cultural evolution. He uses a combination of mathematical modeling, agent-based simulations, and comparative analyses to understand the evolutionary dynamics of social phenomena across the tree of life. Within this broad area, his current interests include the co-evolution of social structure, dynamics of cumulative culture and ecological adaptation in human societies, evolution of social norms, and evolution and ecology of symbioses, among other topics. 

The Goulian lab is broadly interested in the regulatory circuits that enable bacteria to sense and respond to their environment. He develops simple mathematical models to understand how these systems function and to develop testable predictions to guide experiments. He is also interested in how regulatory circuits evolve and their natural variation within and between species.

Dr. Hynd’s primary interest is in partial differential equations which arise in physical and phenomenological models.  I’m particularly interested in problems involving geometry, probability and also especially optimization. I usually employ mathematical analysis in attempts to uncover properties of solutions. On occasion, I’ll also use numerical methods to approximate related quantities of interest.

Dr. Katifori’s group is generally interested in understanding the geometrical and topological principles governing the form and function of living organisms. They primarily focus on theoretical questions inspired by and related to biological transport networks such as the mammalian and plant vasculature. The group tries to understand how living flow networks function, how they develop, what determines their structure and to what extent evolution has driven them to optimality.

Dr, Kim is interested in models of development and evolution of development; geometry of data analysis; and, graphical models. He has worked on mathematical properties of tree-graph models for phylogenies, statistics of spatial processes and geometrical shape, geometrical representation of biological data, and developmental dynamics. He also carries out empirical research in single cell biology applied to problems in cell differentiation and cell phenotypes.

The Mathijssen lab is interested in exploring the physics of life: we combine experimental and theoretical techniques across the disciplines of physics and biology. Our main goals are to unravel the physics of pathogens, to design biomedical materials, and understand the collective functionality of living systems out of equilibrium. Recent themes include ultra-fast biology and hydrodynamic communication (Nature 2019), pathogen clearance in the airways (Nature Physics 2020), and bacterial contamination dynamics (Nature Communications 2019), and designing microrobotic active carpets (Advanced Science 2021).

Robin Pemantle does research in probability and combinatorics.Within probability, Pemantle works on a variety of discreteprobability models, e.g., recently, error correcting in noisy channels, invasion percolation, fractal trees, fault detection, random fitness landscapes. In combinatorics, Pemantle works on ACSV (analytic combinatoricsin several variables), an enumeration technique which has been applied to diverse areas such as random walks, quantum walks, lattice tilings and search trees.

Dr. Strain works in the field of mathematical analysis and studies partial differential equations. He has proven results on partial differential equations from diverse areas including fluid dynamics, kinetic theory, and materials science. Strain does research on problems involving local and global existence and uniqueness of solutions, large time sharp asymptotic behavior and convergence to equilibrium, finite time blow up, and ill-posedness of solutions. He has studied numerous physically motivated partial differential equations including the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations, the relativistic Euler system, the Muskat problem, the Boltzmann and Landau equation under Newtonian mechanics or special-relativity and the Vlasov equations.

Dr. Tishkoff studies genomic and phenotypic variation in ethnically diverse Africans. Her research combines field work, laboratory research, and computational methods to examine African population history, human adaptation, and the genetic basis of variable complex traits including disease risk.  She uses an integrative genomics approach, incorporating data from genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, metabolomics, and the gut microbiome to identify the role of genetics and environment on variable traits in human populations.