Mentors
Systems biology and biomedical data sciences is a research strength area at the University of Virginia. It's why our REU can pull faculty mentors from ten departments across four schools.
Our faculty are committed to training undergraduates and involving them as critical components of their research programs. Undergraduate students in our faculty mentors' labs have won best paper awards in conference proceedings, won competitions, and co-authored papers in high-profile journals including Science, Nature Cell Biology, Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, Molecular Systems Biology, and PLOS Computational Biology.

Timothy E. Allen, Ph.D.
Timothy E. Allen teaches and mentors students in the areas of computational modeling of complex biological systems, molecular and cell biology assays, and medical device design.

Silvia Salinas Blemker, Ph.D.
Silvia Blemker uses experimental and computational models to characterize the relationships between muscle structure, biomechanical properties, biology, and function in order to develop new treatments for musculoskeletal disease

Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D.
Philip E. Bourne leads a range of initiatives to encourage and facilitate the use of big data in large-scale research across the scientific and technological disciplines, with special emphasis on structural bioinformatics and systems pharmacology.

Mete Civelek, Ph.D.

Christopher Deppmann
Christopher Deppman has been interested in the mechanisms underlying long-distance signaling in the context of nervous system development since he was a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the laboratory of David Ginty (now at Harvard).

Sepideh Dolatshahi, Ph.D.

Mohammad Fallahi-Sichani, Ph.D.
Dr. Fallahi-Sichani leads a Systems Biology research program aiming to discover the fundamental mechanisms through which human cancer cells respond heterogeneously to environmental and therapeutic perturbations.

Gregory J. Gerling
Gregory J. Gerling is a Professor of Systems Engineering at the University of Virginia. His research spans fields of haptics, computational neuroscience, UX/UI, human factors and ergonomics, biomechanics, and human–machine interaction.

Clint Miller
Clint Miller studies the genetic and environmental risk factors for coronary artery disease and other complex cardiovascular diseases using a combination of large-scale multi-omics profiling and genetic and drug perturbations. He is an Assistant Professor in Public Health Sciences and a resident member of the Center for Public Health Genomics.

Jason Papin, Ph.D.
Jason Papin, Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, develops computational models of cellular networks and performs experiments to characterize biological systems relevant to human disease. After his training in Bioengineering at University of California, San Diego, Jason Papin joined the faculty at University of Virginia in 2005.

Jeff Saucerman, Ph.D.
Jeff Saucerman, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, combines computational models and high-throughput experiments to discover molecular networks and drugs that control cardiac remodeling.

Chongzhi Zang
Dr. Chongzhi Zang is an associate professor and resident faculty member in the Center for Public Health Genomics, University of Virginia. He holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Public Health Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics.

Aidong Zhang
Aidong Zhang's research focuses on developing machine learning approaches to interpretable and fair learning, concept-based learning, federated learning, and generative AI. She also works on large language models for hypothesis generations for scientific discovery.

Eli Zunder, Ph.D.
Eli Zunder analyzes stem cell fate using single cell mass cytometry and high-dimensional modeling of cell lineage trajectories. He received his Ph.D. in Biophysics from UCSF in 2009.