We are part of a very new field
at the intersection between molecular neurobiology and biomedical engineering
that we term molecular neuroengineering.
One of the most important parts of
our research group is the collaboration with other labs on the Penn campus.
We have strong interdisciplinary components in our research, and people in the
lab often work in tandem with graduate students in neuroscience, pharmacology,
biophysics, other engineering departments, as well as surgical residents from
the neurosurgery and emergency medicine departments at Penn. We share a large
lab facility with other research groups headed by other Penn faculty - Dr. Susan
Margulies (Bioengineering); Dr. Douglas Smith (Neurosurgery); Dr. Kathryn Saatman;
(Neurosurgery). Our main collaborators are these faculty, as well as people
in the medical school (Dr. Jim Eberwine, Dept. of Pharmacology; Dr. Chris Stoeckert,
Department of Genetics, Dr. Akiva Cohen, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia).
Our lab was built with a generous
grant from the National Science Foundation, together with substantial support
from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. Our current research is
supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for
Disease Control, and the Department of Transportation.
Molecular
neuroengineering uses the
tools of molecular and cell biology, computational biology, and bioengineering
to understand how the nervous system works at the single cell and molecular
scale. There is tremendous clinical potential for work in this area, since knowing
the molecular triggering events within a single cell or small multi-cellular
networks will provide the earliest possible targets for treating a disease.
We believe the future treatment of disease will become increasingly reliant
on information at this scale in the nervous system, simply because it provides
the best time to treat a disease. At a more fundamental level, we will also
learn how cells in the nervous system can adapt dynamically under even normal,
physiological conditions.
Lab Overview
Collaborators
Acknowledgements
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