biological systems rendering from Randles lab

Computational Modeling of Biological Systems

Researchers within the Duke BME community focus on the study and advancement of computational methods and data analysis techniques to understand biological phenomena.

This quantitative research uses modeling and simulation, high-performance computing, and large-scale data analysis to create testable hypotheses about mechanisms driving complex biological function.

At Duke, this research spans many application areas including electrophysiology, patient-specific hemodynamics, cellular mechanisms, gene circuits, and synthetic biology. Researchers in this area are broadly interactive with departments throughout the university, including clinical departments of the Duke University School of Medicine, the 'big data' Information Initiative at Duke (iiD), the Duke Cancer Institute, and the academic departments of Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science

Primary Faculty

Roger C. Barr

Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Bioelectricity and biomedical computing.

Pranam D. Chatterjee

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Integration of computational and experimental methodologies to design novel proteins for applications in genome editing, targeted protein modulation, and reproductive bioengineering

Emma Chory

Emma Chory

Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, starting August 2023

Research Interests: Directed Evolution, therapeutic discovery, epigenetics and genomics, High-throughput automation, synthetic biology, protein engineering

Jessilyn Dunn

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Use of large-scale biomedical datasets to model and guide personalized therapies.

Timothy Dunn

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Machine learning, computer vision, neurobiology, animal behavior, computational neuroscience, prognostic modeling, traumatic brain injury

Yiyang Gong

Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering

Warren M. Grill

Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. School Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Neural engineering and neural prostheses and include design and testing of electrodes and stimulation techniques, the electrical properties of tissues and cells, and computational neuroscience with applications in restoration of bladder function, treatment of movement disorders…

David F. Katz

Nello L. Teer, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, in the Edmund T. Pratt, Jr. School of Engineering

Research Interests: Methods for prophylaxis against STD's, emphasizing topical microbicides and contraception; biofluid mechanics; rheology and transport phenomena; biophysical aspects of mammalian sperm motility, sperm transport, and fertilization; and biomechanical functioning of the vitreous of…

Michael D Lynch

W. H. Gardner, Jr. Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Focused on genetically engineering microbes to shut off their growth circuits and turn on new pathways to produce different compounds—improving production of biofuels, pharmacological molecules and industrial chemicals.

Amanda Randles

Alfred Winborne and Victoria Stover Mordecai Associate Professor of Biomedical Sciences

Research Interests: Biomedical simulation and high-performance computing

Daniel Reker

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Integration of active machine learning, biomedical data science, and biochemical experiments for the analysis and design of personalized therapeutic opportunities.

George A. Truskey

R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Cardiovascular tissue engineering, mechanisms of atherogenesis, cell adhesion, and cell biomechanics.

Lingchong You

James L. Meriam Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Quantitative biology, synthetic biology, machine learning, antibiotic resistance, microbiome

Research Faculty

Cameron R. Bass

Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Biomechanics of blast, blunt and ballistic trauma and pediatric trauma. His research focuses on injury risk from microscale to macroscale for the head, neck, thorax and extremities.

Faculty Emeritus

Wanda Krassowska Neu

Professor Emeritus of Biomedical Engineering

Research Interests: Electroporation-mediated drug delivery and gene therapy; Control of cardiac arrhythmias using nonlinear dynamics