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Faculty Members Join Department of Systems Biology and C2B2

The Department of Systems Biology and Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics are pleased to announce that three Columbia University faculty members have recently joined our community. Kam Leong, the Samuel Y. Sheng Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University, is now an interdisciplinary faculty member in the Department of Systems Biology. In addition, Yaniv Erlich and Guy Sella are now members of the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (C2B2). Their addition to the Department and to C2B2 will bring new expertise that will benefit our research and education activities, incorporating perspectives from fields such as nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and evolutionary genomics.

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Department of Systems Biology Announces 2015-2016 Seminar Series

Calendar

The Department of Systems Biology is pleased to announce the speakers in its 2015-2016 Seminar Series. The seminar series features leading investigators working in a diverse set of fields, including stem cell differentiation, regulatory genomics, virus-host interactions, evolutionary genomics, cancer genomics, RNA biology, and retrotransposon biology. Please save the dates!

All events will be held in the Department of Systems Biology Common Room (ICRC 816), unless indicated otherwise. Additional details about these events will be provided at the links below as they become available.

For a continually updated calendar of all Department of Systems Biology events, and to see an archive of past seminars, visit systemsbiology.columbia.edu/events.

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Department of Systems Biology Opens New Biotechnology Development Hub

Peter Sims, Sagi Shapira, and Harris Wang

Assistant Professors Peter Sims, Sagi Shapira, and Harris Wang recently moved into a new Department of Systems Biology laboratory space designed to facilitate the development of new technologies for biological and biomedical research. Photo: Lynn Saville.

The Columbia University Department of Systems Biology has opened a new experimental research hub focused on biotechnology development. Occupying one and a half floors in the Mary Woodard Lasker Biomedical Research Building at Columbia University Medical Center, the facility will promote the design and implementation of new experimental methods for the study and engineering of biological systems. It will also enable a substantial expansion of Columbia’s next-generation genome sequencing capabilities.

The first occupants of the new facility are the laboratories of Department of Systems Biology Assistant Professors Sagi Shapira, Peter Sims, and Harris Wang, along with the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Center of the JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center. The community is slated to grow, as currently unoccupied space will soon accommodate additional Columbia University faculty labs that are also developing new biotechnologies.

“Technology drives science,” says Department of Systems Biology Chair Andrea Califano, “and the ability to design new technologies can make it possible to answer questions that no one else can. By bringing technology-focused investigators and the Genome Center’s sequencing infrastructure together in the same physical location, our goal is that the new Lasker facility will give the Department of Systems Biology — and the entire Columbia University research community — access to unique applications for biological and biomedical research.” 

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Three CUMC Faculty Members Receive Interdisciplinary Appointments

We are pleased to announce that Columbia University Medical Center professors Oliver Hobert, Richard Mann, and Rodney Rothstein have been named to interdisciplinary appointments in the Department of Systems Biology. The addition of this new expertise will expand the breadth of science currently being explored in the Department, enhance educational opportunities for students, facilitate new collaborations, and promote the integration of systems biology perspectives and methods into research being conducted elsewhere in the university.

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Molly Przeworski Named Professor at Columbia

Molly PrzeworskiMolly Przeworski has joined Columbia University as Professor in the Department of Systems Biology and Department of Biological Sciences. The Przeworski lab investigates how natural selection, genetic drift, mutation, and recombination shape the heritable differences seen among individuals and species. To this end, they develop models of the evolutionary process, create statistical tools, and analyze large-scale variation data sets. Among the goals of their research are to understand how natural selection has shaped patterns of genetic variation, and to identify the causes and consequences of variation in recombination and mutation rates, in humans and other organisms.

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Peter Sims Appointed to Columbia Genome Center

Peter SimsPeter Sims, an assistant professor in the Columbia University Department of Systems Biology, has been named Associate Director for Novel Technologies at the JP Sulzberger Columbia Genome Center. In this role he will devise, direct, and implement strategies for incorporating new high-throughput experimental methods into the research done at the Genome Center.

Trained as a physical chemist, Dr. Sims has been developing a number of innovative technologies for studying single cells in a high-throughput setting. Using a type of microfluidics called soft lithography, his laboratory has designed a method for creating arrays composed of wells just tens of microns in diameter, small enough to isolate and perform high-throughput experiments on individual cells.  

Appointing Dr. Sims to his new role will enable the Columbia Genome Center to develop a variety of new applications that will benefit researchers across the Columbia University community. 

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Tuuli Lappalainen Joins Columbia University Department of Systems Biology

Tuuli LappalainenTuuli Lappalainen has joined Columbia University as an assistant professor in the Department of Systems Biology. Dr. Lappalainen is a specialist in the analysis of RNA sequencing data, with research interests including functional variation in the human genome, population genetic background of variation in the human genome, and interpretation of genome function.

Dr. Lappalainen joins the Department of Systems Biology in co-appointment with the New York Genome Center (NYGC), where she will also serve as a Junior Investigator and Core Member. Based in lower Manhattan, NYGC is a consortium made up primarily of New York-area institutions that is designed to translate promising genomics-based research into new strategies for treating, preventing, and managing disease. This co-appointment with Columbia University — an institutional founding member of the NYGC — will enhance collaboration between the two institutions. (Read an interview with Dr. Lappalainen at the New York Genome Center website.)

Dr. Lappalainen earned her PhD in genetics at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and held appointments as a postdoctoral researcher in at the University of Geneva Medical School, Switzerland and at the Stanford University School of Medicine. She is the chair of the analysis group for the Genetic European Variation in Health and Disease (Geuvadis) Consortium’s RNA sequencing project, a member of the analysis group for the National Institute of Health’s Genotype Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, and a member of the analysis and functional interpretation groups for the 1000 Genomes Project.

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Announcing the New Columbia University Department of Systems Biology

Columbia University Department of Systems Biology

Attendees at the June 2013 Columbia University Department of Systems Biology retreat.

Effective July 1, 2013, the Columbia Initiative in Systems Biology is now the Columbia University Department of Systems Biology. Approved by a vote of the University Trustees, this step recognizes the growth in systems biology research and education that has taken place at Columbia, and formally establishes this emerging discipline as a major area for research at the university.

As Andrea Califano, chair of the new department, explained, "This achievement testifies to the dedicated community that has been gathering at Columbia over the past decade around the field of systems biology. We have witnessed the emergence of a compelling scientific agenda that combines innovative experimental and quantitative methods to address important biological and biomedical questions in ways that were unimaginable just a few years ago. It is very exciting to see Columbia take this step because systems biology is paving the way toward new, more rational approaches in basic and translational research."

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