Professor Ting Lu is Looking for a Physics Grad Student

Dr. Ting Lu in the Departments of Bioengineering and Physics is looking for a talented and self-motivated physics graduate student to work in the newly emerging area of systems and synthetic biology, which spans the boundary of physics, biology, and engineering.

Gene regulatory networks are the infrastructures of cells that implement defined functions. Prof. Lu’s research focuses on synthetic and systems biology - the analysis, construction, and exploitation of these regulatory networks. He is interested in understanding the architecture and dynamics of naturally existing networks, primarily those in prokaryotes, and exploring their relations to cellular function. One interesting example is bacterial intercellular communication through quorum sensing and the collective behaviors of populations via this mechanism. Exploring the robustness, adaptation, and evolution of genetic regulatory networks is of great interest to the Lu lab (see the bottom of this post for a more detailed description of research topics). To pursue these research goals, Prof. Lu has employed an integrated theoretical and experimental approach. Theoretical tools from nonlinear dynamics and statistical mechanics and experimental techniques from molecular biology are often used for our research.

Lu’s long-term goal is to uncover nature's design principles of gene regulatory networks and to apply these principles to engineer novel circuits for biomedical applications.

Prof. Lu is a member of the Department of Bioengineering, the Institute for Genomic Biology, and an affiliate of Physics Department. Prospective students are not required to have a background in biology as long as they are open minded and willing to learn biology. The Lu lab as a whole conducts both experimental and theoretical researches but individuals are not required to pursue both unless the students are interested in that.

For additional information about Prof. Lu and his research, please see his departmental website. If you're interested in discussing possible research opportunities with Prof. Lu, please contact him via email: luting@illinois.edu.
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Expanded description of research interests and questions: Biological organisms are complex systems consisting of many genes, proteins, and other molecules. One grand challenge in the post-genome era is to understand biological function in terms of the interactions among these components. However, even the simplest functions often require a large array of elements accompanied with their intricate interactions for defined collective behaviors. Such great complexity naturally demands a systemic and network-based study of biological systems, which is the focus of my research. The study of collective phenomena and their biological functions center on the following general questions: What is the structure of a network that possesses a specific biological function (architectural basis)? What is the outcome of the behavior (biological function)? How does it perform (system properties such as robustness and sensitivity)? How does it progress over time (evolution)? And what do we learn in terms of circuit design and engineering (synthetic gene circuit)? To address these questions, I have adopted an integrated theoretical, computational, and experimental approach whereby experiments and modeling are conducted in parallel, symbiotically leading to a more complete understanding of biological systems.