Computational Biology

Field Description

Computation has become essential to biological research. Genomic databases, protein databanks, MRI images of the human brain, and remote sensing data on landscapes contain unprecedented amounts of detailed information that are transforming almost all of biology. The computational biologist must have skills in mathematics and computation as well as in biology. A key goal in training is to develop the ability to relate biological processes to computational models.
 
The field provides interdisciplinary training and research opportunities in a range of subareas of computational biology involving topics such as DNA and protein databases, protein structure and function, computational neuroscience, biomechanics, population genetics, and management of natural and agricultural systems.

Students majoring in computational biology are expected to obtain a broad, interdisciplinary knowledge of fundamental principles in biology, computational science, and mathematics. But because the field covers a wide range of areas, it would be unrealistic to expect a student to master each facet in detail. Instead, students choose from specific subareas of study: they are expected to develop competence in at least one specific subdomain of biology (i.e., genetics, macromolecular biology, cellular biology, organismal biology, behavioral biology, or ecology) and in relevant subareas of computational science and mathematics. 
Students are supervised by field faculty drawn from sixteen departments.

Contact Information

Website: https://cals.cornell.edu/computational-biology
Email: jf633@cornell.edu
Phone: (607) 255-5488

102 Weill Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853

 

Data and Statistics

Field Manual

Subject and Degrees

Computational Biology

Concentrations by Subject

Computational Biology

  • computational behavioral biology
  • computational biology
  • computational cell biology
  • computational ecology
  • computational genetics
  • computational macromolecular biology
  • computational organismal biology

Faculty

Sumanta Basu

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: My primary field of work is in modeling and analysis of large-scale time series data sets. I have been collaborating with Professor Andrew Clark on developing data-driven methods for learning gene regulatory networks form time-course omics data sets (RNAseq, ChIP-seq etc.). I also collaborate with Professor Amy Kuceyeski on developing high-dimensional methods for learning functional connectivity patterns from brain signals measured using fMRI and EEG data sets.

Adam Bogdanove

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: functional genomics of plant interactions with plant pathogenic bacteria, especially rice with Xanthomonas oryzae; role of TAL effects in plant disease and applications for disease control and DNA targeting, including genome editing

James G. Booth

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: Linear Models; generalized linear models; random effects; Monte Carlo methods; bioinformatics

Adam Boyko

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: genetics of adaptation and domestication; bioinformatics

Ilana Lauren Brito

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: population genetics; bacterial genomics;human microbiome;systems biology

Edward S. Buckler

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics; computational organismal biology
  • Research Interests: plant breeding and genetics, statistical genetics, computational genetics

Casey Lu Cazer

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: Epidemiology of zoonotic diseases, evidence-based medicine, and One-Health; classical statistical methods, mathematical modeling, and machine learning

Andrew G Clark

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: Computational biology

Thomas A. Cleland

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: computational neurobiology; perception; cognition; olfaction

Charles G. Danko

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: transcriptional regulation, epigenetics, evolution of gene regulation

Iwijn De Vlaminck

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: precision medicine; single-cell genomics; circulating cell-free DNA; genomic medicine

David James Field

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational behavioral biology
  • Research Interests: theories and models of sensory coding and visual processing; visual perception; relations between the structure of the natural environment and the representation of that environment by sensory systems

Katie Gold

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational ecology
  • Research Interests: plant disease detection and epidemiology, pathology, remote sensing/imaging spectroscopy

Yrjo Tapio Grohn

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational organismal biology
  • Research Interests: basic metabolism in ruminants and genetics to veterinary epidemiology, economic modeling and food safety

Andrew Hein

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational ecology; computational organismal biology
  • Research Interests: My research combines computational models with state-of-the-art data collection systems to better understand the dynamics of ecological systems and the behavior of interacting organisms. I emphasize building theory that tightly links patterns in data to computational models that are useful for understanding how biological systems work. Problems I have worked on include understanding how predators and prey generate flexible yet precise sequences of movement decisions when interacting with one another, how information and misinformation spreads through biological populations, and how inter-individual behavioral interactions and emergent collective behavior can drive ecosystem states and tipping points.

Jaehee Kim

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: population genetics, genetic epidemiology, stochastic process, dynamical system, Bayesian inference

Jon M Kleinberg

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational behavioral biology
  • Research Interests: combinatorial structure of networks and information, with applications to computational biology

Amnon Koren

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: gene expression;gene regulation;molecular biology;molecular genetics; DNS replication and mutation

Amy Frances Kuceyeski

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational behavioral biology; computational biology
  • Research Interests: Computational neuroimaging, machine learning/statistical modeling of brain connectivity networks, brain-behavior mapping

William Kai Ming Lai

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational cell biology
  • Research Interests: Gene regulation, DNA sequencing, biochemistry, machine learning, next generation sequencing assays

Christiane Linster

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational organismal biology
  • Research Interests: neural basis of sensory processing and memory

John T Lis

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: gene expressions, gene regulation, molecular biology, molecular-genetics, RNA aptamer, RNA splicing, transcription

Susan Rutherford McCouch

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: plant breeding; plant genetics

Philipp Messer

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics

Jason G. Mezey

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: quantitative genetics/genomics; statistical genetics; computational biology; pathway modeling; molecular evolution

Gaurav Dilip Moghe

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: plant biology, evolutionary genomics, metabolomics, natural product discovery

Shaila Ahsan Musharoff

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: I am a statistical and population geneticist focused on addressing the statistical challenges of, and leveraging the unique insights contained in, admixed populations. Though human genetic studies have generally focused on people of European descent, this excludes a substantial portion of the global population. The findings from European populations do not necessarily generalize to other populations, which has contributed to the increasing health disparity in the United States wherein individuals of diverse ancestries have a greater health burden due to social and systemic factors, including being underserved by the medical system. One way to reduce health disparities is to better understand population-specific genetic and environmental factors that contribute to traits and disease, which can be identified by genetic studies of diverse populations. A major challenge for such studies is accounting for ancestry, both as a confounder and as a source of trait-relevant information. This challenge is particularly complex for admixed populations, whose ancestry is from multiple continents, and make up 41% of the US’s population (13% are African-American and 19% are Hispanic-Latinx). In my research, I develop and apply statistical methods to model ancestry, especially in admixed populations, with the goal of reducing health disparities and learning about novel trait and disease biology.

Christopher R. Myers

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology
  • Research Interests: systems biology; dynamic modeling

Benjamin F. Pugh

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: biochemical, genetic, genomic and computational approaches toward deciphering how gene regulatory proteins assemble onto a gene and regulate its expression

Hudson Kern Reeve

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational behavioral biology
  • Research Interests: behavioral ecology; plasticity in insect social behavior

Kelly R Robbins

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: quantitative genetics, genomics and computational science to improve the efficiency of crop breeding programs and increase understanding of complex traits

Frank C. Schroeder

  • Campus: Ithaca - (Minor Member)
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology

Praveen Sethupathy

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: Regulation of gene expression, Genomics of microRNAs, Quantitative genetics

David B Shmoys

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: efficient algorithms for discrete optimization with applications in computational biology

Adam C. Siepel

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: genetics, genomics, computational biology, computational genetics

Fei Wang

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational cell biology
  • Research Interests: Machine learning and data mining, Computational multi-omics analysis, Integrative computational biomedicine

April Wei

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational biology; computational genetics
  • Research Interests: population genetics, statistical genetics, human evolution, inference, scalable algorithm

Xiaomu Wei

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: cancer genetics/genomics

Martin Timothy Wells

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics
  • Research Interests: applications of statistics in biology

Haiyuan Yu

  • Campus: Ithaca
  • Concentrations: Computational Biology: computational genetics