Systems biology:

Gene regulatory network identification:

In biology, advances in high-throughput technologies have made it feasible to obtain experimental data on genomic and proteomic scales. These developments have led to the emergence and rapid advancement of systems biology. Although tremendous progress has recently been achieved in systems biology, many experimental and computational challenges still remain in gaining in-depth systems level knowledge of biological systems and understanding cell functions in terms of fundamental molecular properties. These challenges present a great opportunity for control scientists, as biological systems share many common features with chemical plants, and our goal is to help address some of these challenges from a control engineering perspective. Our research in this area focuses on developing an integrated computation-experimental framework to reverse engineer and analyze gene regulatory networks in microbes and to help understand the dynamic properties of cellular and biochemical systems that are not apparent from studying individual components.

Early cancer detection: 

In the past few years, clinical proteomic research has made significant progress in identifying novel biomarkers for early cancer detection. This emerging field uses mass spectrometry-based protein profiles/patterns of easy accessible body fluids to distinguish cancer from non-cancer patients. Although there is a sound basis for optimism that novel and robust approaches using proteomic data to cancer detection and screening will emerge in the near future, further progress in refining the reproducibility and sensitivity of the technology will be required and the question about whether the approach of discovery-based serum proteomics can accurately and reliably diagnose cancer has not been resolved. Our research in this area explores the remarkable similarities between disease detection in clinical research and fault detection in systems engineering, and focuses on applying principles and adapting proven techniques for fault detection to early cancer detection.