Computational Biology & Medicine
With the increasing availability of data and the improved understanding of system-level interactions in biological systems, computational methods have found many applications in biology and medicine. Research in CISE develops algorithms for long-standing problems in computational biology, such as predicting and characterizing protein interactions, optimizing metabolic networks, and developing computational neuroscience models. Another line of research develops computational methods to advance experimental observation techniques used in biology, from imaging methods to atomic force microscopy. A burgeoning area of research applies Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods to medical data, leading to disease/outcome prediction models and medical decision-making tools.
Convergence: RAISE Integrating machine learning and biological neural networks
The field of neuroscience is undergoing a rapid transformation, and within the next decade, it may become possible to capture data from millions of individual neurons at the same time. Such a technological advancement would allow scientists to record and analyze a significant fraction of the brain’s neural network at unprecedented spatial and time resolutions. […]
Stochastic Dynamic Modeling of Cellular Protein Interactions
Stochastic methods for modeling molecular-protein interactions form an entirely new set of ap-proaches to the important biological goal of simulating cellular biology in silico. Though great progress has been made in this direction by computational biologists over the past 15 years, the goal of “siliconizing” cellular molecular interactions still remains remote. More precisely, the current […]
CIF: Small: Collaborative Research: Signal Processing for Nonlinear Diffractive Imaging: Acquisition, Reconstruction, and Applications
There is a growing need in biomedical research to observe biological structure and processes on the length scales smaller than 100nm. Conventional optical systems cannot effectively provide such information, however, due to the infamous diffraction limit. The formulation of the diffraction limit fundamentally relies on the presumed linearity in the interaction between the illuminating light […]
QuBBD: From Personalized Predictions to Better Control of Chronic Health Conditions
The United States spends twice as much annually on health care than the next-highest spender but significantly under-performs in quality of care metrics, such as life expectancy and infant mortality. Hospital care accounts for about a third of U.S. health care spending. It has been estimated that nearly $30 billion in hospital care costs each […]
Joint Estimation Of Motion Model, Model Parameters, And Particle Trajectories In Single Particle Tracking
Single particle tracking (SPT) is a powerful class of techniques for understanding biomolecular motion at the subcellular level in the crowded environments of the plasma membrane, cytoplasm, and nucleus. The basic scheme is to acquire image sequences, typically through wide-field fluorescence imaging, produce trajectories from these images, and finally to estimate motion parameters from the […]
NSF, CISE Look to the Future of Smart Healthcare at Campus Workshop
By Sara Cody As the National Science Foundation looks to the future of science in smart and connected health, the agency partnered with the Center for Information and Systems Engineering to convene a gathering of principal investigators and other research leaders on the BU campus this month. The interdisciplinary researchers discussed their progress and identified […]
Analysis and Prediction of Molecular Interactions
The research in our lab focuses on molecular recognition using computational methods and follow-up validation experiments. Our primary target areas are (1) protein-protein docking and (2) exploring binding properties of proteins by computational solvent mapping. Protein docking methods are needed because many important interactions occur in weak, transient complexes that are not amenable to direct […]
AF: Small: Manifold optimization algorithms for protein-protein docking
Proteins are the major building blocks of the cell. Many proteins perform their function by interacting with other proteins. In a typical cell hundreds of thousands of different protein interactions take place. Characterizing these interactions helps elucidate how living organisms function at the molecular level, contributes towards the development of treatments against diseases such as […]
ABI Development: Utilization of Diverse Data in Exploring Protein-Protein Interactions
Each living cell is packed with proteins that continuously interact with each other in response to envirtonmental and other signals to control the cell’s growth and eventual fate. The analysis of such interactions is crucial for understanding signal transduction pathways that drive cell differentian during development and throughout the life an an organism. These pathways […]
CPS: FRONTIER: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: BIOCPS FOR ENGINEERING LIVING CELLS
Recent developments in nanotechnology and synthetic biology have enabled a new direction in biological engineering: synthesis of collective behaviors and spatio-temporal patterns in multi-cellular bacterial and mammalian systems. This will have a dramatic impact in such areas as amorphous computing, nano-fabrication, and, in particular, tissue engineering, where patterns can be used to differentiate stem cells […]