Research Interests

My lab is interested in the general question of how signaling circuits generate complex cellular behaviors such as cell polarity, motility, growth, and differentiation. Because these processes have been difficult to understand with standard techniques, we are developing new approaches to isolate and quantitatively interrogate individual steps in the signaling cascade.  We are particularly interested in four areas:

1. Understanding the self-organizing circuits that underlie cell polarity, directed migration, and morphogenesis.

2. Developing optogenetic tools to probe the spatial and temporal logic of signal transduction cascades.

3. Investigating how mechanotransduction integrates the local and global organization of migrating cells.

4. Probing how the three-dimensional structure of the eukaryotic genome regulates gene expression.