Biological and Health Systems

This research area uses network science to study the complex interconnections within biological systems and their far-reaching impact on human health, from subcellular and genomic interactions to population-level phenomena. By integrating tools from network science, computational modeling, artificial intelligence, behavioral analytics, and medicine, our cross-disciplinary approach generates insights that directly inform disease control strategies, health system decision-making, policy guidance, and personalized medicine. This positions us at the forefront of efforts to understand how biological interdependencies shape human health outcomes and to address some of the most pressing health challenges in public health today.

Our focus

Population Health

Network Neuroscience

Network Medicine

Food Science

Explore our research

Featured projects

Project website

Mobile food environments

An exposure to fast-food outlets during our daily movement raises visit odds to a fast-food outlet by 20%, even if our home food environment doesn’t offer fast-food. Through big mobility data we better understand individuals’ interactions with their food environment and find that interventions taking into account this spatial and temporal data, and our behavioral choices have a 2x to 4x higher impact than interventions based solely on home food environments.

GroceryDB, a food processing-level assessment

GroceryDB analyzes 50,000+ products from major US grocery stores using machine learning to assess food processing levels. This open-source database includes nutritional content, ingredients, and prices from Walmart, Target, and Whole Foods, enabling consumer decision-making and public health initiatives to improve food environments globally

Large-scale network medicine screening

Designed to optimize tools for Network Medicine applications, NetMedPy is an open-source, user-friendly Python package tailored for high-performance computing. It efficiently handles large-scale data, making it ideal for studies involving drug screening, drug repurposing, and comorbidity identification.