DIRECTOR OF THE PROGRAM:
Professor Michael Shelley

New York University (NYU)– Graduate School of Arts and Science, NYU School of Medicine (NYUSM)–Sackler Institute, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM) offer an interdisciplinary doctoral program in computational biology. With funding from the National Science Foundation’s IGERT initiative and other sources, the Program in Computational Biology (COB) is training a new generation of scientists in the fundamentals and applications of computational methods to biological problems, including the elucidation of macromolecular structure and function (proteins, DNAs, RNAs), genomic analysis and bioinformatics, understanding of the structure and function of physiological systems (cells, organs, neuronal networks), and methods for cellular and biomedical imaging. Students from mathematics/computer science, as well as from biology/chemistry backgrounds, are encouraged to apply. COB training emphasizes innovative research in the biosciences and medicine, using a variety of modern techniques for computing, modeling, and data analysis.

Students apply directly to the COB program and must specify a home department in one of the seven participating divisions—the Department of Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science, or Mathematics; the Center for Neural Science; the Sackler Institute; or the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Students are accepted into the COB program conditional on their acceptance by a home department. More details on the application process can be found at www.nyu.edu/fas/program/compbio.

Representative Faculty

NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, SACKLER INSTITUTE OF GRADUATE BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES

Stuart M. Brown, Ph.D. 1992, Cornell.
Database development to mine gene expression data.

Timothy Cardozo, M.D., Ph.D. 2001, New York.
Investigation and development of computational tools targeted at visualizing and engineering 3-D structural features of molecules.

Brian Dynlacht, Ph.D. 1992, California (Berkeley).
Transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of cell cycle and cell development using a combination of biochemistry, cell biology, mutant cell lines, and state-of-the-art, high-throughput genomics approaches.

Yuval Kluger, Ph.D. 1992, Tel Aviv.
Developing mathematical, statistical, data mining, graph theory, and physical approaches to elucidate principles governing the dynamics and structures of biological networks using a variety of high-throughput genomics and proteomics experimental data from collaborating laboratories and data repositories.

John Laflen, Ph.D. 2003, Purdue.
Modeling of human auditory perception; device design for sensory prosthetics; statistical signal processing.

MOUNT SINAI SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Aneel K. Aggarwal, Ph.D. 1984, London.
Biophysics; DNA-binding proteins.

Katherine L. B. Borden, Ph.D. 1990, Yale.
Structure/function relationships of RING proteins.

Mihaly Mezei, Ph.D. 1972, Budapest.
Physiology, biophysics, and molecular modeling.

Roman Osman, Ph.D. 1974, Tel Aviv.
Molecular mechanisms of DNA-damaged repair; structure function of peptide receptors.

Roberto Sanchez, Ph.D. 2000, Rockefeller.
Bioinformatics; computational and structural biology.

Ming-Ming Zhou, Ph.D. 1993, Purdue.
Molecular mechanisms of healthy and diseased cells.

NYU DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

Richard Bonneau, Ph.D. 2001, Washington (Seattle). Joint appointment with the NYU Department of Computer Science.
Mathematical/computational analysis; functional genomics.

Suse Broyde, Ph.D. 1963, Polytechnic (Brooklyn).
Carcinogen-modified DNAs.

Francesca Chiaromonte, Ph.D. 1996, Minnesota. Joint appointment with the NYU Department of Mathematics.
Multivariate analysis and regression; stochastic modeling; analysis and modeling of large-scale genomic data.

Kristin C. Gunsalus, Ph.D. 1997, Cornell.
Molecular networks; functional genomics.

Fabio Piano, Ph.D. 1995, New York.
C. elegans functional genomics.

Daniel Tranchina, Ph.D. 1981, Rockefeller. Joint appointment with the NYU Department of Mathematics.
Visual neuroscience; computational neuroscience.

NYU DEPARTMENTS OF MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE, COURANT INSTITUTE FOR MATHEMATICAL SCIENCES

David Cai, Ph.D. 1994, Northwestern.
Nonlinear stochastic behavior in physical and biological systems.

Leslie Greengard, M.D./Ph.D. 1987, Yale.
Scientific computing; fast algorithms; potential theory.

Bhubaneswar Mishra, Ph.D. 1985, Carnegie-Mellon.
Computational and systems biology; mathematical and theoretical computer science.

Charles S. Peskin, Ph.D. 1972, Yeshiva.
Physiology; fluid dynamics; numerical methods.

Michael J. Shelley, Ph.D. 1985, Arizona.
Biological fluid dynamics; visual and computational neuroscience.

Eric Vanden-Eijnden, Ph.D. 1997, Free (Brussels).
Molecular dynamics; chemical and biological networks; rare events and stochastic systems.

Margaret H. Wright, Ph.D. 1976, Stanford.
Computational mathematics; optimization; linear algebra.

NYU DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

Hin Hark Gan, Ph.D. 1989, McGill.
RNA structures and genomics; graph theory.

Tamar Schlick, Ph.D. 1987, New York.
Computational biology and biophysics; mathematical biology; numerical analysis; computational chemistry.

Mark Tuckerman, Ph.D. 1993, Columbia.
Molecular dynamics; statistical mechanics.

Yingkai Zhang, Ph.D. 2000, Duke.
Computational biochemistry and biophysics.

NYU CENTER FOR NEURAL SCIENCE

John Rinzel, Ph.D. 1973, New York. Joint appointment with the NYU Department of Mathematics.
Biophysics; neural computations.

Alex D. Reyes, Ph.D. 1990, Washington.
Functional interactions of neurons in a network.

Nava Rubin, Ph.D. 1993, Hebrew.
Visual perception and the neural basis of vision.

Robert M. Shapley, Ph.D. 1970, Rockefeller.
Neuronal basis of visual perception.

Eero Simoncelli, Ph.D. 1993, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Computational vision, including neuroscience, perception, and image processing.