Hosting Labs

The PoLS-theory group at Emory (Berman, Nemenman, Sussman, Weissman, Koelle) would be happy to host students. We work on data-driven theory of biological systems, and students would learn advanced data analysis and physical modeling methods, such as dimensionality reduction, information theory, machine learning, stochastic processes, statistical inference. These are applied to problems such as population dynamics and population genetics, animal behavior, computational neuroscience, cell signaling, and tissue mechanics.

Khalid Salaita’s nanobiology lab can also host students, and can expose them todesign and fabrication of force sensing chips and image analysis in applications to cellular biology and cancer biology.

We would be happy to host a student in the Karatekin lab at Yale University.

Possible things the student could teach us:
-improving our optical tweezers setup, by adding a large-bandwidth position-sensitive detector to measure bead displacements from the trap center. There are some constraints regarding access to the sample, and there would ideally be some software integration or at least synching between imaging and force measurements.
- Automated image analysis based on machine-learning.
- detection of analytes using amperometry in microchips and/or electrical characterization of supported lipid bilayers using surface microelectrodes.

We could teach:
- measurements of cell membrane tension using optical tweezers
- electrophysiological recordings (cell-attached or whole-cell voltage clamp)
- methods to study membrane fusion/exocytosis

The O'Hern research lab at Yale University can host Ph.D. students interested in computational studies of biological systems, such as proteins, DNA organization in nuclei, and cells in tissues. All computational studies are carried out in close collaboration with companion experimental studies at Yale. Students will learn advanced Monte Carlo sampling techniques, accelerated molecular dynamics simulations, GPU programming, as well as image processing and analysis.