David Umulis
Purdue University, IN·Biology
Living things must keep working despite damage, infection or other disturbances, a property called robustness. To respond well, cells and tissues must combine many kinds of signals at once, such as chemical cues and mechanical forces.
- Fields
Biology
Biomedical Engineering
Computer Science
- Topics
robustness
signal integration
second messengers
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Aug 2027
What they work on
- Test whether second messengers such as calcium integrate chemical and mechanical signals to control the cytoskeleton and cell signaling during tissue remodeling after damage or attack.
- Determine whether this second-messenger signal integration is a conserved rule shared by organisms from different kingdoms, studied from cellular to organismal scales.
- Build AI and machine learning tools to process large imaging, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and simulation datasets that measure cell and tissue remodeling.
- Develop a simulation-based fusion method that uses measurements from one biological system to predict responses to perturbation in another system.
More about the research
How they merge these different inputs into one coordinated response is poorly understood. This institute-scale project studies that question across very different organisms and across scales, from single cells to whole organisms.
Why it matters
Knowing how organisms combine chemical and mechanical signals to respond to wounds and attack adds basic understanding of how living systems stay robust. This could eventually inform work on how organisms repair wounds and resist infection. The institute's curriculum and training tools in computational modeling are meant for wide use in preparing students in integrative biology.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Joseph Powers
University of Washington, WA·Biophysics·Early-career
Test whether loss of Filamin C (FLNC), a protein linking the heart cell's contractile units to its surroundings, disrupts inside-out force transmission by altering filament lattice geometry in mouse cardiomyocytes, using X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy and multiscale modeling.
Agnieszka Truszkowska
University of Alabama in Huntsville, AL·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Build a computational model of how circulating tumor cell (CTC) clusters move through the bloodstream, including their surroundings, interactions with other cells, and cell-to-cell signaling.
Martha Grady
University of Kentucky, KY·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Identify the dominant parameters that promote strong biofilm adhesion using laser spallation, and establish an Adhesion Index comparing mammalian cell adhesion to biofilm adhesion on implant surfaces.
The school
Purdue University: 43 labs on PI Pages, $932M a year on research, 833 research doctorates a year.
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