Quantitative Biology @ UMass Chan Medical School

Solving the big problems in modern biology often requires multidisciplinary approaches involving chemistry, physics, math and computer science. At UMass Chan Medical School, we see these quantitative approaches as central to many of the research projects going on around campus. As such, we are always recruiting graduate students, postdocs and faculty members with quantitative backgrounds and interest in quantitative approaches to biology.

If you have a background in chemistry, physics, math or computer science and are interested in applying your expertise to biological problems, if you are a biologist who wants to explore more quantitative approaches, or if you already straddle one of these interdisciplinary boundaries, we encourage you to join us.

Programs Offering Training in Quantitative Biology

Quantitative approaches to biology are woven throughout the UMass Graduate program.

Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology applies computation approaches outstanding biological problems including the genomics of gene expression, the evolution of behavior and disease resistance, and protein folding.

Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology host labs applying a wide variety of quantitative approaches to fundamental mechanics questions, from the mathematical modeling of DNA replication kinetics to the structural modeling of HIV inhibitor resistance, from to the femtosecond biophysics of protein folding to the evolutionary trajectories of protein fitness, and from the structural biophysics of viral assembly to the epigenetic regulation of inheritance.

The Program in Systems Biology encompasses computational and experimental approaches to and nuclear structure and organization, quantitative gene regulation, network analysis of cancer therapeutics, mechanisms of robustness in cell biology, and the interactions between gene regulatory and metabolic networks.

The RNA Therapeutics Institute focuses on the manifold roles of RNA in biology and the tremendous therapeutic potential for RNA technologies. Their faculty span the gamut from optical physics to developmental biology, from and chemical biology to RNA splicing.

Explore the research of some of our Quantitative Biology faculty on the Featured Faculty page.