Data Science Insitute
Center for Computational Molecular Biology

Research

Our prime intellectual mission is to promote the development, implementation, and application of analytical and computational methods to foundational questions in the biological and medical sciences.

Research Areas

The research programs of the Core Faculty in CCMB lie fundamentally at the intersection of computer science, evolutionary biology, mathematics, and molecular and cellular biology.

The Ramachandran Lab

Sohini Ramachandran, Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology and Data Science, Professor of Computer Science

Determining the causes and consequences of human genetic variation using population genetics, statistics, and evolutionary theory. Research in the Ramachandran lab addresses problems in population genetics and evolutionary theory, generally using humans as a study system. Our work uses mathematical modeling, applied statistical methods, and computer simulations to make inferences from genetic data.

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The Weinreich Lab

Daniel Weinreich, Professor and Chair of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology

The Weinreich Lab uses complementary theoretical and experimental methods to study how genetic novelty fuels evolution by natural selection. Current research interests include the evolutionary consequences of interactions among mutations and the evolution of a broad class of modifiers mutations.

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The Huerta-Sanchez Lab

Emilia Huerta-Sanchez, Associate Professor Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Director of the Center for Computational Molecular Biology

Integrating theoretical, computational and statistical modeling to address questions in human evolutionary biology. Current research interests involve scanning human genomes from different populations to detect mutations in genes that have helped humans adapt to different environments like different diets, temperatures, pathogens and altitudes.

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The Rand Lab

David M Rand, Stephen T. Olney Professor of Natural History

We are interested in understanding how natural selection acts on genes and genomes. A major focus of the lab is to study the mitochondrial genome and its interactions with the nuclear genome, and how this interaction influences animal performance, evolutionary fitness, and aging. A second major interest is how environmental stressors influence the genetic composition of populations. The goals of our work are to identify the genetic interactions that allow organisms to adapt to environmental heterogeneity.

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The Bailey Lab

Jeffrey Bailey, Mencoff Family Associate Professor of Translational Research, Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

The Bailey Lab studies the role of genetic variation in immunity and disease from the perspective of both the host and pathogen. Current research areas include Malaria & Parasitology, Burkitt Lymphoma & EBV, and Genomics & Genetics.

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Siddle Lab

Katherine Siddle, Donna McGraw Weiss and Jason Weiss Assistant Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology

Katherine Siddle is interested in how pathogens (in particular viruses) emerge, spread and evolve, and the selective pressures this places on infected hosts. To address these questions, Katie's research integrates the analysis of large biological data sets, experimentation and fieldwork to investigate the genetic diversity of emerging viruses and the role of host and pathogen genetic variation in disease severity. 

The Larschan Lab

Erica Larschan, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology and Biochemistry

​​How are global and gene-specific transcriptional regulatory signals integrated to precisely regulate genes? We combine genomics, genetics and computational biology to reveal new mechanisms which coordinate gene regulation across eukaryotic species.

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The Fairbrother Lab

William Fairbrother, Professor of Biology, Department of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry

The Fairbrother lab seeks to understand the mechanisms of RNA splicing and regulation. Our lab uses a combination of computational biology and high throughput genomics techniques to identify functional elements in the genome. We seek to understand recognition events important in gene expression (i.e transcription and RNA splicing). 

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The Neretti Lab

Nicola Neretti, Associate Professor of Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry, Associate Director for the Center on the Biology of Aging

Our research group combines genomics and computational biology to study the biology of aging and age-associated diseases. 

Ma Lab

Ying Ma, Edens Family Assistant Professor of Healthcare Communications and Technology. 

Ying Ma's research interests focus on developing efficient statistical learning methods to address a variety of biological problems and computational challenges in genomics and genetics, particularly single-cell RNA-sequencing, and spatially resolved transcriptomics.

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Wu Lab

Zhijin Wu, Professor of Biostatistics

Dr. Wu's research focuses on developing statistical methods and softwares for high throughput technologies such as DNA microarrays, second generation sequencing and high throughput screening assays. Recent topics of methodological development include methods for differential expression and normalization in RNA sequencing data, cross platform data combination of microarray and NGS, social network models in gene set analysis.

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Istrail Lab

Sorin Istrail, James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor of Computational and Mathematical Sciences

Professor Istrail's current research focuses on SNPs and haplotypes and genome-wide association studies (GWAS), the regulatory genome and gene regulatory networks, and protein folding algorithms; algorithms and computational complexity; and statistical physics.

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Singh Lab

Ritambhara Singh, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Data Science

The Singh lab research lab develops machine learning methods with the goals of data integration and model interpretation for biological and biomedical applications.

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Research News

All Research News
During CCMB's Fall 2025 Graduate Research Symposium this week, four senior PhD students gave presentations on their current research projects to fellow students and CCMB faculty, with topics ranging from resistance to anti-malarial drugs to introgression in archaic humans.
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Ying Ma, the Edens Family Assistant Professor of Healthcare Communications and Technology and Assistant Professor of Biostatistics, will address genomic challenges using computational methods in her upcoming research supported by three recent grants from the NSF and NIH.
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Get to know Sohini Ramachandran, Hermon C. Bumpus Professor of Biology and Data Science, Professor of Computer Science, and Director of Undergraduate Studies at DSI.
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