Mechanotransduction: An intriguing fact about MSCs are that they also sense and respond to forces, the elasticity of the substrate and geometric cues. How do cells integrate information from the physical environment, especially from forces and flows is a fascinating question. This involves force sensitive proteins, coupled with the cytoskeleton and signaling processes at focal adhesions. These processes are remarkably conserved across many cell types. We are currently working on mathematical models of the cytoskeleton to understand how cells differentiate in response to nanotopography.

In our laboratory we are building a systematic signal transduction model of MSC differentiation under the influence of growth factors. 
We are also using microarray analysis in collaboration with experimental laboratories to help build the gene transcription network.

Mathematical Modeling of Signal Transduction
We use information theory and stochastic simulations to try understand the design principles behind signal transduction in mammalian and bacterial cells.

Systems Biology for Biofuel development
Single celled photosynthetic organisms are our big hope for sustainable biofuel development since they do not compete with food crops. It is our view that our success in actually harnessing these organisms will ultimately depend upon how well we understand them! We are currently working on building quantitative, or semi-quantitative predictive models of metabolic fluxes in cyanobacteria.

Mathematical Modeling of the Immune System
We are working on mathematical models of coarse grained descriptions of the thymic selection process.

Population dynamics of bacteria and viruses
What are the dynamics of bacterial replication under different environmental conditions? What are the dynamics of viral replication in bacteria? We are trying to answer these and related questions by models of stochastic bacterial growth as well as kinetic modeling of viral replication in bacteria.

Theoretical quantitative biology and biophysics
We are interested in a variety of fascinating problems that lie at the interface between biology and the physical sciences. Some of them are listed below:
(i) Adaptor Proteins in Biological Networks
(ii) Bacterial Lysis after phage infection
(iii) Protein diffusion on cell surfaces and on lipid membranes
(iv) Mathematical models of evolution
(v) Spread of infection in mammals: system level working of the immune system.

Some of these e projects are in collaboration with colleagues at University of Pennsylvania, Colorado State University, IIT Mumbai, India and the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi, India.

Note: If you are a graduate student, a prospective graduate student or an undergraduate who is interested in working on these questions using cool computational and mathematical methods, do get in touch!