News

Professor Saeed Tavazoie Joins Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology

Saeed Tavazoie, Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University, has joined C2B2. Dr. Tavazoie's research focuses on understanding the organizing principles that underlie the evolution and function of molecular networks. At one scale, his work uses large-scale genome-wide observations to reveal the nuts and bolts of these networks and to understand how they come together to orchestrate biological behavior. At the other extreme, it aims to achieve a holistic understanding of function by considering the native ecological context in which these networks have evolved. At the highest level, his goal is to understand how molecular networks embody an internal representation of the outside world and facilitate adaptive behaviors.

Dr. Tavazoie's research focuses on these problems in the context of transcriptional regulatory and genetic networks of organisms ranging from bacteria to human. In addition to using traditional experimental methods, his lab develops and employs novel technologies for making genome-wide observations, together with computational and analytic tools required to turn these observations into predictive models of the underlying biology.

Professor Tavazoie received his PhD from Harvard Medical School in 2000. He joins C2B2 and Columbia University from Princeton where he was Professor in the Department of Molecular Biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.