Cancer Systems Biology

The course directors are:

Marian Waterman, Ph.D.
Dr. Waterman is a Professor in in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Dr. Waterman is the Director of the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) at UC Irvine and the Deputy Director of the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center (CFCCC) at UC Irvine. The focus of her research is mechanisms of Wnt signaling that direct cellular phenotypes in cancer.  Recently, her group has discovered that Wnt signals direct Warburg metabolism and in return, that Wnt-driven metabolism is used as a signal to remodel the microenvironment. Dr. Waterman’s research is multi-disciplinary via collaboration with physician scientists, mass spectroscopists, mathematicians and physicists at the UC Irvine Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics. The overarching goal of Dr. Waterman’s research is to understand how gene expression, metabolism, development, carcinogenesis and Wnt signaling are connected. She has been teaching graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and medical students for 23 years.

John Lowengrub, Ph.D.
Dr. Lowengrub is Chancellor’s Professor of Mathematics and Biomedical Engineering. He is a systems biologist and mathematician whose research efforts focus on developing mathematically rigorous and biologically-justified models of solid tumors as they develop through all phases of development from avascular multicellular spheroids, to angiogenesis to invasion of malignant tumors. Dr. Lowengrub co-authored the monograph “Multiscale Modeling of Cancer: An Integrated Experimental and Mathematical Modeling Approach” published by Cambridge University Press. Dr. Lowengrub’s research is highly interdisciplinary and involves collaborations with many of the faculty participating in this course (including a long-term collaboration with co-Director Dr. Waterman ). Dr. Lowengrub has directed research projects for over 60 students, including high school, undergraduate and graduate students, 15 of whom have received their Ph.D. Dr. Lowengrub also has mentored 20 postdoctoral researchers many of whom now hold academic faculty positions. Dr. Lowengrub led the successful development of the MCSB interdisciplinary M.S./Ph.D. graduate program—an effort that spans 10 departments and 5 schools—and now serves as its founding Director. Dr. Lowengrub also serves as a co-program leader of the Systems, Pathways and Targets (SPT) program at the CFCCC. SPT membership comprises an interdisciplinary group including cell biologists, immunologists, geneticists, developmental biologists, computational scientists, and clinicians. A unique aspect of SPT is the integration of Systems Biology approaches in cancer. As co-Program Director, Dr. Lowengrub has recruited systems biology faculty for membership in the CFCCC and has been working with other leaders in the CFCCC to focus efforts of systems biologists at UCI on cancer-relevant problems.