Brian Athey
Ph.D., Cellular and Molecular Biology: Biophysics Concentration, University of Michigan
B.S., Biochemistry; Minors: Physics and Mathematics, University of Michigan-Dearborn
St. John’s College, Classical Studies, Annapolis, MD
Michael Savageau Collegiate Professor, Chair, Department of Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics, University of Michigan
Professor, Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics, University of Michigan
Professor, Psychiatry, University of Michigan
Professor, Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School
Professor, Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics, University of Michigan
Professor, Psychiatry, University of Michigan
Professor, Internal Medicine, University of Michigan Medical School
Research Interests:
- Integrative Biomedical Informatics and Translational Bioinformatics: This research thrust is leading to increased understanding of systems models and mechanisms of human health and disease, and will contribute to our understanding of the basis of Personalized Medicine. These new disciplines involve integration of diverse bioinformatics data-types and information bases into disease-specific models and networks, allowing a researcher to explore the systems properties and complexity of biological and biomedical systems. This relies heavily on computer and information sciences, biostatistics, and bioinformatics.
- Computational Multiscale Modeling and Simulation of Macroscopic and Microscopic Biological Systems: This research thrust has two components:
- A macroscopic Human Systems Biology (HSB) modeling and simulation thrust, building from earlier work on the NIH Visible Human Project (Anatomy), and the DARPA Virtual Soldier Project (Physiology, Function, Pathology);
- A Microscopic cellular systems approach to further understand the hierarchal nature of the structure, function, and dynamics of the eukaryotic chromatin fiber in the intact nucleus and synthetic fiber systems. These are both long-standing research interests, and both involve multiscale theory, systems modeling, computer image processing, ontological descriptions and machine learning for extension and linkage to other informational components, cutting-edge integrative biomedical informatics, and experimental verification using epigenomic and structural biology
- Interdisciplinary Team Science. I am a natural leader of interdisciplinary science teams that include combinations of experts from biology, medicine, bioinformatics, computer & information science, information science, bioengineering, mathematics, statistics, systems modeling, and complexity science. I will continue to pursue _big science_ and _small science_ in this fashion, collaborating with experts from diverse fields of knowledge related to research thrusts 1 and 2.