People: Faculty
Istvan Albert
Research Professor of Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics, large scale biological data analysis, microarrays and sequence analysis. Scientific programming, algorithm development. Database-driven web development.
Reka Albert
Distinguished Professor of Physics and Biology
Biological physics and network modeling.
Ganesh Srinivasan Anand
Associate Professor of Chemistry
Dynamics of large biomolecular complexes; uncovering what drives their assembly, regulation and function through mass spectrometry.
Marco Archetti
Associate Professor of Biology
Evolutionary Genetics. Cancer dynamics. Defective interfering viruses. Evolutionary game theory.
Jean-Paul Armache
Assistant Professor of of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
The mechanisms and functions of ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling complexes and their place in gene regulation.
Le Bao
Professor of Statistics
Bayesian methods, data mining, computational methods, applications in health, environmental and social sciences.
Guilherme Becker
Associate Professor of Biology
Host-microbial interactions, landscape genetics and the ecology of global change stressors. Building models and conducting field and laboratory experiments to understand the biotic and abiotic mechanisms driving wildlife disease dynamics in both tropical and temperate systems.
Nita Bharti
Huck Early Career Professor; Associate Professor of Biology
The Bharti lab investigates the underlying links between humans, pathogens, and the environment. We work to identify the mechanisms that give rise to heterogeneities in host disease burden and risk across scales, across spatial and temporal scales. We study the dynamics of host-environment interactions that drive movement and contact patterns as they relate to to pathogen transmission and access to health care.
Ottar Bjornstad
Huck Chair of Epidemiology; Distinguished Professor of Entomology and Biology; Adjunct Professor in Statistics
Population ecology and population dynamics with particular emphasis on mathematical and computational aspects
Margherita Cantorna
Director of the Center for Molecular Immunology and Infectious Disease; Distinguished Professor of Molecular Immunology
Understanding the working of the immune system. Utilizing animal models of several human diseases including enteric infections and inflammatory bowel disease to determine the cellular targets and molecular signals by which dietary components regulate immunity.
Isabella Cattadori
Professor of Biology
Immuno-epidemiology of co-infection, how host immunity modulates parasite interactions and transmission and how host molecular processes explain the dynamics of infection at the population level.
Jessica Conway
Associate Professor of Mathematics
Viral infection dynamics and interplay with therapies for elimination or control
Francisco Dini-Andreote
Huck Early Career Chair in Microbial Community Ecology, Assistant Professor of Plant Science
Microbiome, plant-microbe interactions, and community ecology. Harnessing the plant microbiome to enhance protection against biotic and abiotic stresses.
Nikolay Dokholyan
G. Thomas Passananti Professor of Pharmacology; Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
We are a translational systems research group in the Pharmacology at the Penn State College of Medicine. Our laboratory focuses on understanding etiologies of human diseases, such as cystic fibrosis (CF), amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and pain conditions, such as hyperalgesia.
Edward Dudley
Professor of Food Science; Director of E. coli Reference Center
Mechanisms driving toxin production in Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli; use of genome sequencing to track pathogen transmission during foodborne outbreaks
Matthew Ferrari
Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics; Huck Career Development Professor; Professor of Biology
Public Health, Quantitative Epidemiology, Population Ecology, Statistics, Computational and Mathematical Biology
Sagan Friant
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Evolutionary anthropology of human health, disease ecology, nutrition, socio-ecological systems, bushmeat hunting, Nigeria.
Erika Ganda
Emphasis Area Representative, Microbiome Sciences; Assistant Professor of Food Animal Microbiomes
Developing practical ways to leverage the microbiome to improve food safety and improve food production animals' production efficiency.
Adam Glick
Emphasis Area Representative, Cancer Biology; Professor of Molecular Toxicology and Carcinogenesis;
The role of Transforming Growth Factor-beta in cutaneous inflammation and cancer development, and how the immune system responds to epithelial cells with activated oncogenes such as Ras. Signaling pathways that regulate senescence of premalignant epithelial cells and how cells escape from oncogene-induced senescence.
Christina Grozinger
Director of the Center for Pollinator Research; Director of the Insect Biodiversity Center; Publius Vergilius Maro Professor and Huck Scholar of Entomology
Genomics of social behavior and health in bees
Ephraim M. Hanks
Associate Professor of Statistics
Spatio-Temporal Statistics. Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling. Optimal Sampling. Animal Movement. Landscape Genetics.
Elsa Hansen
Assistant Research Professor - Read Lab
Evolution, transmission and management of drug-resistance. Improving treatment of infectious disease and cancer using mathematical models and optimal control theory.
Murali Haran
Associate Professor of Statistics
Statistical computing (Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms); spatial models (Gaussian random field models); methods for complex computer models; interdisciplinary collaborations in environmental sciences, climate science, disease modeling, ecology
Kevin Hockett
Huck Early Career Chair; Associate Professor of Microbial Ecology
Biological Control, Biology and Ecology of Plant-Microbe and Plant-Environment Interactions, Microbial Ecology and Population Biology Faculty
Peter Hudson
Former Director, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Willaman Professor of Biology
Population dynamics of infectious diseases in wildlife and the dynamics of parasite community structure.
David Hughes
Huck Chair in Global Food Security; Professor of Entomology and of Biology
Parasite manipulation of host behavior
David R Hunter
Professor of Statistics, Department Head
I work on statistical models for networks, mixture models, and certain optimization algorithms called MM algorithms. A full list of papers and related work, such as software, may be found at http://sites.stat.psu.edu/~dhunter/.
Joyce Jose
Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Virus-host interactions involved in the pathogenesis of alphaviruses and flaviviruses. Analysis of virus induced structures and cytoskeletal modifications in mammalian host and insect vector using high-resolution live cell imaging and electron microscopy. Viral determinants of neurotropism, encephalitis, transmission and persistence in BSL-3 pathogens.
Vivek Kapur
Associate Director, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Huck Distinguished Chair in Global Health; Professor of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases
The basic mechanisms by which pathogenic microbes successfully infect, colonize, and cause disease in their hosts.
Robab Katani
Assistant Research Professor of Global Health
Global health security, infectious diseases, and host-pathogen dynamics, as well as expertise in the enhancement of capabilities in the Low- and Middle-Income Countries, including Tanzania and India.
David Kennedy
Assistant Professor of Biology
Ecology and evolution of infectious diseases, with particular interest in how disease dynamics influence pathogen emergence, virulence evolution, and drug or vaccine resistance.
Tae Hyun Kim
Huck Early Career Chair; Assistant Professor of Avian Biology
Improving poultry health by applying modern genetic approaches including gene editing. Particular focus on identifying key genes and regulatory elements associated with improved economic traits.
Girish Kirimanjeswara
Emphasis Area Representative, Immunology and Infectious Disease; Associate Professor of Veterinary and Biomedical Science
Establishing the Virulence Factors
Jasna Kovac
Lester Earl and Veronica Casida Career Development Professor of Food Safety; Associate Professor of Food Science
Integrating epidemiological, microbiological, molecular and omics methods to better understand microbial pathogenic potential, antimicrobial resistance, and epidemiology of foodborne pathogens.
Tracy Langkilde
Penn State Interim Executive Vice President and Provost; Dean of the Eberly College of Science; Professor of Biology
The interface of ecology and evolution to understand how an organism's traits are matched to its environment and responds to novel selective pressures imposed by global environmental change, and the consequences of this adaptation.
Jesse Lasky
Associate Professor of Biology
Ecological and evolutionary genomics, genetic and ecophysiological basis of adaptation to environmental stress, evolutionary ecology of biological complexity.
Edward Levri
Associate Professor of Biology
Research interests lie in the evolutionary ecology of parasitism and disease, invasion ecology, and predator-prey interactions.
Darla Lindberg
Professor of Architecture
Designing buildings that limit disease spread.
Scott Lindner
Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Co-Director, Center for Malaria Research
Our laboratory couples molecular parasitology and structural biology to study the malaria parasite (Plasmodium spp.).
Manuel Llinas
Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Understanding the molecular mechanisms of gene regulation and metabolism in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum using functional genomics and metabolomics.
Margarita Lopez-Uribe
Associate Professor of Entomology
How environmental change and human management shape bee health and long-term persistence of their populations in agricultural areas.
Jennifer Macalady
Director of the Ecology Institute; Professor of Geosciences
Microbial interactions with earth materials: soils, sediments, solutes, atmospheric gases, minerals, and rocks. Early evolution of Earth’s biosphere, including photosynthesis and sulfur cycling. Microbial ecology, environmental omics, microbial biogeography.
Erina MacGeorge
Professor of Communication Arts and Science
Antibiotic stewardship, doctor-patient communication
Erika Machtinger
Associate Professor of Entomology
Veterinary entomology, including vector-borne diseases. Focus is on ecology and behavior associated with host-parasite interactions to improve or develop new control methods.
James Marden
Associate Director of Operations, Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences; Professor of Biology
How physiological variation within species affects their ecology and evolution. Primarily with insects, but recently also with plants, and a particular interest in allelic variation in the pathogen resistance genes of tropical trees.
Elizabeth McGraw
Professor and Huck Scholar in Entomology
The genetics of vector, pathogen and symbiont interactions.
Tim Miyashiro
Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
How bacteria adapt to a host environment. The mutualistic symbiosis established between the Hawaiian bobtail squid (Euprymna scolopes) and a bioluminescent bacterium (Vibrio fischeri).
George Perry
Professor of Anthropology and Biology
Anthropological genomics, paleogenomics, human body size evolution, parasite evolution, and evolutionary medicine.
Jason Rasgon
Professor of Entomology and Disease Epidemiology
Integrating population biology, ecology, molecular tools and theory to address fundamental and applied questions related to vector arthropods and the pathogens they transmit.
Andrew Read
Senior Vice President for Research; Evan Pugh Professor of Biology and Entomology; Eberly Professor of Biotechnology
The ecology and evolutionary genetics of infectious disease.
Tim Reluga
Associate Professor of Mathematics and Biology
Dynamics of biological systems
Katriona Shea
Professor of Biology; Alumni Professor in the Biological Sciences
The use of ecological theory in population management.
Justin Silverman
Assistant Professor of Information Sciences and Technology
Statistical methods for the analysis of biomedical data (or any other interesting data/questions)
Rachel Smith
Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences
Quantitative social scientist whose interests lie broadly in social influence and social systems, specializing on power, networks, and stigma. Design and evaluation of effective health campaigns. Infectious diseases and genomics.
Troy Sutton
Huck Early Career Chair in Virology, Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Disease
Animal models of influenza; Airborne transmission of influenza viruses; Evolution of pandemic influenza viruses; Highly pathogenic avian influenza; Development of live-attenuated influenza vaccine platforms; High containment BSL3+ research
Moriah Szpara
Professor of Biology
How genetic variation influences the outcomes of viral infection, particularly for neurotropic viruses such as herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1) and HSV-2, using high-throughput sequencing, comparative genomics, neuronal cultures, and genetic manipulation of both host and pathogen.
Kurt Vandegrift
Associate Professor
Disease ecology with an emphasis on the population dynamics of zoonotic parasites and reservoir hosts.
Anne Vardo-Zalik
Assistant Professor of Biology
The ecology and population genetics of malaria parasites and their vectors
Yong Wang
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Applying nature and biology as design guidelines to the creation of biomimetic and bioinspired materials at both the nanoscale and macroscale level for drug delivery, clinical diagnosis, and regenerative medicine.
Yin-Ting (Tim) Yeh
Assistant Research Professor of Physics - Terrones Lab
Multidisciplinary study focused on developing point-of-care technologies for rapid detection of infectious diseases.