Phone:
(352) 273-8738
Email:
mahyaaghaee@ufl.eduPhone:
(352) 273-8738
Email:
baylorfain@ufl.eduPhone:
(352) 273-8718
Email:
bflorence@ufl.eduPhone:
(352) 273-8718
Email:
melody.walker@ufl.eduDepartment:
MD-PULMONARY SYSTEMS MEDICINE
Henrique de Assis Lopes Ribeiro
Research Assistant Professor

Email:
i.ramirezzuniga@ufl.eduCourtesy Faculty
Phone:
(352) 273-8738
Email:
f.castiglione@ufl.eduPhone:
(352) 273-8718
Phone:
(352) 273-8738
Email:
kschlauch@ufl.eduGraduate Students
Undergraduate & High School Students
Sharanya Chatterjee
10th grade at Freedom High School
Project: Effects of hypoxia on the endothelium
Mentors: Dr. Ribeiro and Dr. Walker

Isabella Delbakhsh
10th grade at Lake Highland Preparatory
Project: Shear stress effects on the endothelium
Mentors: Dr. Ribeiro and Dr. Walker

Ryan Elkind
I am a third-year Mathematics and Economics double major at the University of Florida, with a mathematical background in topological data analysis. I am working with Dr. Brunson on an analysis of the structure and function of glomerular capillaries. Using computational methods, we aim to characterize the three-dimensional structure of the glomerular capillary network, with the objective of providing useful insight into glomerular function.

Sofia John
I am a third-year Statistics major and Women’s Studies minor at UF. I have been working on a project to create an agent-based model of bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis with Dr. Sordo Vieira and Dr. Wheeler. It is our hope with this model to be able to better understand the mechanisms which induce fibrosis in the lungs. My interest in computational modeling began in high school after I participated in an internship with the Integrated Mathematical Oncology department at Moffitt Cancer Center. There I worked on differential equations to model dormancy in multiple myeloma with Dr. Miller and Dr. Basanta. Outside of research, I volunteer in the Pediatric Cardiac ICU and the Pediatric ICU at Shands Children’s Hospital through a student organization called Dream Team and I also work with the Alachua County Victim Services and Rape Crisis Center as a helpline volunteer.

Bhavya Kambara
I am an 11th grader at Land O’ Lakes High School, where I am a part of the IB programme. I currently work with Dr. Moore in researching how mathematical equations and computer science can be used to model diseases such as sarcoidosis. With these models, we hope to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of diseases within patients. I plan to pursue a pre-med path after graduating high school to integrate my passion for medicine and helping people into a career.

Achyudhan Kutuva
I am a second-year undergraduate student at the University of Florida double majoring in Microbiology and Cell Sciences, Data Science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. I currently work with Dr. Ribeiro to investigate gene regulation and expression in lung-based epithelial cells in response to COVID-19 to develop a Boolean network model. This model will tie together various signaling pathways of inflammation response to stochastically understand the biological effects of the novel coronavirus.

Abhinav Penmetcha
I am a Biology major and Bioinformatics minor at UF and will be graduating in May 2024. I am working with Dr. Brunson on a project to analyze the relationships between race/ethnicity, socioeconomic determinants of health, clinical profiles, and post-transplant survival in lung transplant patients through statistical modeling. With these models, we hope to gain a better understanding of the set of interaction effects between these variables to gauge the historical and current statuses of disparities in lung transplantation.

Chhavi Pokharna
I am an 11th grader at Orlando Science High School. Currently, I am working with Dr. Moore on a project on a disease known as Sarcoidosis for which we will be creating a mathematical model to better understand the illness in patients. After high school, I plan on going into medicine to pursue my career and follow my passion of helping others.

Giuseppe Scibilia
I am a freshman at The University of Florida currently studying mathematics. I am working with Dr. Moore to create a model of the microenvironment that interacts with myeloma cells. This model will be created by determining equations which modeling the kinetics of the microenvironment. With this, we hope to find new signaling pathways essential to myeloma cells which we can block using medication. We can then simulate millions of trials using our model, varying multiple elements of the treatment process, with the goal of determining a new, or optimizing a current, treatment regimen for multiple myeloma.

Igor Sokolov
I am a UF class of 2023 mathematics major with a physics minor working with Dr. Brunson and Dr. Sordo Vieira on creating a software package to perform analysis on signal transduction networks using minimal functional routes, graph expansion and the route modulus. I hope that this work will prove a valuable tool for researchers and further our understanding of static boolean networks.

Kristina Suarez
I graduated from the University of Florida with a BS in Mathematics and plan to attend medical school in Fall 2023. I am working with Dr. Brunson on a study of the structure and function of glomerular capillaries using network and topological analysis.

Xinyi Zhang
I am a third-year Statistics and Mathematics major and Computer Science minor at UF. I am working with Dr. Brunson on a project that compares conventional statistical learning models with individualized cohort models on clinical diagnosis. I plan to attend graduate school in biostatistics or data science, and I wish to work with healthcare data science in the future.

Former Lab Members
Adi Cohen
I graduated from the University of Florida pre-med program with a major in Biology and minors in Disabilities in Society and Health Disparities in Society. I worked with Dr. Brunson on a systematic review of medical literature to determine how patient similarity–based individualized modeling is conducted using retrospective data. I currently attend Nova Southeastern University for medical school to further my passion for medicine and healthcare.

Bruce Shapiro
I was Research Assistant Professor in the Laboratory for Systems Medicine. I managed the standup of the lab’s physical presence in the College of Medicine and tracked all room remodeling from inception to completion. I am currently Associate Professor of Mathematics at Rock Valley College.

Yara N Skaf
Areas of Interest:
Biomedical informatics
Computational biology
Mathematical data science
Topological Data Analysis (TDA)

Van Thuy Truong
I am a pharmacist by training and an applied mathematics PhD student with AstraZeneca and University of Leeds, UK. I am working on combining agent-based models with pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic models (simulated as ODEs and PDEs) to predict tumour growth and interaction with immune cells during mono and combination therapy. I am visiting the systems medicine lab to work with Dr. Fonseca and learn about techniques to fit ODEs to my agent-based model for predicting tumour behaviour and optimising treatment schedules.

Veronika Zeindl
I graduated from the Technical University of Munich with a MS in Mathematics. I worked with Dr. Walker on understanding the sensitivity analysis method eFAST. The ultimate goal is to use eFAST to analyze and reduce agent-based models.
