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Biomath Faculty Advisors

The Biomathematics Graduate Program faculty is drawn from a number of departments across campus and off-campus adjunct faculty whose main interests involve modeling biological systems. People who work with biomath students can be added to the faculty roster. 

The following list sorts faculty according to whether they have recently advised a biomath student.

Director

Seth Sullivant     Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Phylogenetics, evolutionary biology, algebraic statistics 

Faculty Who Have Recently Advised Biomath Students

Zixuan Cang     Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Mathematical and Computational Biology, Topological and Geometric Data Analysis 
Jie Cao     Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Ecology 
Research Interests: Quantitative fisheries ecology with an emphasis on population dynamics and ecosystem modeling 
Kevin Flores     Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Development of mathematical/statistical methods for parameter estimation, uncertainty quantification, and forecasting with applications to Precision Medicine, Environmental Toxicology, and Synthetic Biology 
Kevin Gross     Professor, Department of Statistics 
Research Interests: Theoretical and statistical ecology, population dynamics, biogeography, and genetic pest management 
Mansoor Haider     Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Cartilage mechanics, osteoarthritis, cell mechanics, cell-matrix interactions, tissue engineering 
Jason Haugh     Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering 
Research Interests: Intracellular processes: signal transduction, cell adhesion and cytoskeletal dynamics; Biophysics of cell movement; Multiscale modeling of wound healing, cancer, and immune response
Cristina Lanzas     Professor, Department of Population Health and Pathobiology 
Research Interests: Epidemiology and ecology of infectious diseases in animal and human populations; Understanding the role that the environment plays on transmission and the dissemination of antimicrobial resistant pathogens; Various pathogen-host systems including foodborne pathogens in farm animals and health-care associated diseases in humans 
Alun Lloyd     Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Epidemiology of infectious diseases, spatial processes in ecology and evolution, modeling the spread of genetically engineered organisms 
Sharon Lubkin     Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Biomechanics, biofluids, developmental biology and regenerative medicine, cell biology, morphogenesis and pattern formation, transport, cell and tissue motion, mechanobiology 
Mette Olufsen     Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: The study of cardiovascular dynamics including wave propagation in arterial networks, cardiovascular regulation and the interaction with the inflammatory system. Parameter estimation, parameter identifiability, optimization model based data-analysis 
David Rasmussen     Associate Professor, Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology 
Research Interests: Phylodynamics: Tracking the spread of human and agricultural pathogens using a mix of phylogenetic methods and epidemiological modeling; Experimental work on how plant viruses adapt to new hosts and expand their host range 
Ross Sozzani     Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology 
Research Interests: Plant stem cells, Plant development, Computational Biology, Predictive Modeling 
Hien Tran     Professor, Department of Mathematics, Center for Research in Scientific Computation 
Research Interests: Control theory; Parameter Estimation; Kalman filtering; Mathematical modeling of biological and physiological systems 

Other Biomath Faculty

George R. Hess     Professor, Department of Forestry & Environmental Resources 
Research Interests: Conservation biology in suburbanizing landscapes, effective teaching and learning 
Spencer Muse     Professor, Department of Statistics 
Research Interests:
Brian Reich     Associate Professor, Department of Statistics 
Research Interests: Spatial statistics; Extreme value analysis; Quantile regression; Variable selection and dimension reduction 
Charles E. Smith     Associate Professor, Department of Statistics 
Research Interests: Neurobiology, stochastic processes, physiological models 
Gail G. Wilkerson     Professor, Crop Science Department 
Research Interests: Development of computerized crop and pest management decision aids; development of physiologically based models of crop growth, pest population dynamics, and crop/pest interactions; and using information on climate variability and climate forecasts to improve crop and pest management decision-making 
Zhao-Bang Zeng     William Neal Reynolds Professor of Statistics and Genetics 
Research Interests:

Other Adjunct Faculty

Sudin Bhattacharya     Adjunct Assistant Professor; Senior Research Investigator, The Hamner Institute 
Research Interests: Computational modeling of cellular signaling and transcriptional regulatory networks; “Virtual tissue” model of the human liver and effects of exposure to environmental contaminants; Deterministic and stochastic models of B cell differentiation and its disruption by TCDD (Dioxin) 
Georgiy Bobashev     Adjunct Assistant Professor; Senior Data Scientist, RTI International, Research Triangle Park, NC 
Research Interests:
Rory Conolly     Adjunct Professor; Senior Research Biologist, Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 
Research Interests:
Tim Elston     Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, UNC-Chapel Hill 
Research Interests:
Beth Gardner    
Research Interests:
Nick Haddad     William Neal Reynolds Professor, Department of Biological Sciences 
Research Interests: Spatial population and community ecology, conservation biology in fragmented landscapes 
John M. Hoenig     Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, Virginia 
Research Interests:
Ruian Ke     Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Treatment strategies of chronic viral infections (HIV and HCV); Multi-scale modeling of evolutionary dynamics of infectious disease; drug resistance; Nonlinear dynamical systems; Stochastic processes; Systems biology 
Julia S. Kimbell    
Research Interests:
Michael W. Lutz    
Research Interests:
W. Owen McMillan    
Research Interests: Integration of high-resolution molecular data (DNA sequences, microsatellites, multi-locus DNA fingerprints, and, more recently, gene expression data) with developmental and ecological information to understand the origins of functional variation. Key current research projects/programs include: 1) Genetic Basis of Convergent Evolution, 2) Developmental Architecture of Mimicry in Heliconius, and 3) Population History of Morphological Differentiation. 
Amirhossein Mokhtari     RTI International 
Research Interests:
Johnny Ottesen     Roskilde University 
Research Interests:
Jim Riviere     Burroughs Wellcome Professor; MacDonald Chair of Veterinary Medicine, University Distinguished Professor of Anatomy and Physiology, Kansas State University 
Research Interests:
R. Woodrow Setzer     Adjunct Professor; National Center for Computational Toxicology, US Environmental Protection Agency 
Research Interests:
Eric Stone    
Research Interests:
Qiang Zhang     Adjunct Assistant Professor; Research Investigator and Director, Center for Dose Response Modeling, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences 
Research Interests: Using computational models to understand and predict nonlinear dose responses resulting from perturbation of molecular toxicity pathways by cellular stressors 

Emeritus Faculty

James F. Gilliam     Professor, Department of Biological Sciences 
Research Interests: Population ecology, especially spatial processes. Behavioral ecology, especially decisions under threat of death. Ecology of streams and rivers. 
Marlene Hauck     Professor, Department of Clinical Sciences 
Research Interests: Clinical trials of novel therapeutics; functional genomics in solid tumors (soft tissue sarcomas, osteosarcomas) 
Ken Pollock     William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor, Department of Applied Ecology 
Research Interests: Wildlife and fisheries statistics and modelling, ecology and conservation biology, sampling animal populations, biometrics 
Henry Schaffer     Professor Emeritus of Genetics and Biomathematics 
Research Interests:
James F. Selgrade     Professor, Department of Mathematics 
Research Interests: Population biology and genetics, endocrine modeling, menstrual cycle control, dynamical systems and ordinary differential equations 
R. E. Stinner     Professor Emeritus, Department of Entomology 
Research Interests:
Jeff Thorne     Professor Emeritus, Departments of Biology and Statistics 
Research Interests: I develop statistical methods for studying molecular evolution. Topics of interest include: divergence time estimation, sequence alignment, impact of protein tertiary structure on protein evolution, using disease data to understand molecular evolution, and interlocus gene conversion.