Faculty

DBBS mentors and educators are key to our training mission. Those who serve as primary mentors are DBBS Program Members, and others who participate in the educational mission are General Members. Learn about DBBS Faculty Membership »

To provide a supportive learning environment for our trainees, many DBBS-affiliated faculty have completed eight or more hours of CIMER-based mentorship training with a trained facilitator, as indicated below with a profile badge.

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Find faculty of interest by entering a name, program or expertise keyword in the search bar; selecting a PhD program from the drop-down menu; or selecting the last name initial from the A-Z filter.

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Ting Wang, PhD

Sanford C. and Karen P. Loewentheil Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Genetics

Program affiliation
Computational and Systems Biology
Molecular Genetics and Genomics
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Human and Statistical Genetics

Research summary
Epigenome evolution and epigenetic determinants of cell fate

Key words
DNA methylation, transposable elements, epigenomics, evolution, genomics, systems biology

Mark Warchol, PhD

Professor

Program affiliation
Neurosciences
Developmental Regenerative and Stem Cell Biology

Research summary
Mechanisms of development, injury and repair in the vertebrate auditory system

Key words
hearing, vestibular, sensory, development, regeneration, macrophage, microglia

Jeffrey Ward, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor

Program affiliation
General

Research summary
Identification of tumor specific mutant antigens recognized by the immune system as foreign that serve as the target of a T-cell response against tumors

Key words

Erika Waters, PhD

Associate Professor

Program affiliation
Human and Statistical Genetics
Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Research summary
Understand how people think about health risks and how those thoughts influence their health-related decisions and behavior

Key words

Mark Watson, MD, PhD

Professor

Program affiliation
Molecular Genetics and Genomics
Cancer Biology
Human and Statistical Genetics

Research summary
Detection and molecular classification of rare tumor cells to predict and mitigate cancer metastases

Key words
cancer, functional genomics, gene expression, pathogenesis, breast cancer

Max Wattenberg, MD

Assistant Professor

Program affiliation
Cancer Biology
Immunology

Research summary
We are focused on exploiting features of the tumor microenvironment for cancer therapy. Specifically, we study stromal – tumor cell interactions in pancreatic cancer with the goal of defining clinically relevant cancer biology.

Key words
pancreatic cancer, immunotherapy, myeloid cells, tumor microenvironment, CRISPR screening

Jason Weber, PhD

Professor

Program affiliation
Cancer Biology
Molecular Cell Biology
Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Research summary
Tumor suppressor and oncogene networks in cancer biology

Key words
Breast cancer, lung cancer, tumor suppressors, oncogenes, microfluidics, RNA editing, metastasis

Conrad Weihl, MD, PhD

Gabe Weil Professor

Program affiliation
Neurosciences
Molecular Cell Biology

Research summary
The interplay between the ubiquitin-proteasome and autophagy pathways in skeletal muscle and neurodegenerative disorders

Key words
protein production and clearance, proteasome, skeletal muscle, inclusion body, autophagy

Gary Weil, MD

Gerald and Judith Medoff Professor

Program affiliation
General

Research summary
Research on the biology of filarial nematode parasites

Key words
gene expression, epidemiology, functional genomics, parasitology

Katherine Weilbaecher, MD

Professor

Program affiliation
Cancer Biology
Molecular Cell Biology
Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Research summary
Molecular mechanisms through which tumor cells metastasize to bone

Key words
cancer, bone biology, integrin biology, metastasis

Timothy Wencewicz, PhD

Associate Professor

Program affiliation
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis

Research summary
Antibiotic drug discovery

Key words

Muriah Wheelock, PhD

Assistant Professor

Program affiliation
Neurosciences
Computational and Systems Biology
Biomedical Informatics and Data Science

Research summary
Elucidating the biological pathways underlying cognition, emotion, and behavior, determining developmental deviations and degenerative processes in these pathways

Key words

Sean Whelan, PhD

Marvin A. Brennecke Distinguished Professor and Head of the Department of Molecular Microbiology

Program affiliation
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology
Immunology
Molecular Cell Biology

Research summary
The Whelan laboratory studies the biology of negative-strand (NS) RNA viruses, divided between two major areas of focus: viral gene expression and viral-host cell interactions.

Key words

Michael White, PhD

Associate Professor

Program affiliation
Molecular Genetics and Genomics
Computational and Systems Biology
Molecular Cell Biology
Biomedical Informatics and Data Science
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology

Research summary
My lab seeks to understand how DNA sequence determines its regulatory function. We combine functional genomic technologies with deep learning models to answer this question.

Key words
computational biology, gene regulation, genomics, deep learning, technology development

Adam Wilcox, PhD

Professor

Program affiliation
Biomedical Informatics and Data Science

Research summary

Key words

Laura Wiley, PhD

Associate Professor

Program affiliation
Biomedical Informatics and Data Science

Research summary
Our lab develops and applies informatics methods to support clinical research and learning health systems across a range of neurological and chronic disease domains. Core research areas include **computational phenotyping**, where we focus on developing, evaluating, and critically appraising algorithms that identify patient populations from large-scale EHR data; **real-world evidence generation**, where we build automated pipelines and predictive models that translate clinical data into actionable insights for care and research; and **research infrastructure for learning health systems**, where we design and evaluate the data harmonization pipelines, classification tools, and integration methods that make large-scale clinical research possible. Across all of these areas, we maintain a strong emphasis on algorithmic equity, examining how methods perform across demographic subgroups and surfacing structural disparities in access and care. These methods are applied to a broad set of clinically significant conditions—including diabetes, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, ALS, movement disorders, and epilepsy—that share common informatics challenges such as diagnostic uncertainty, heterogeneous data, and underrepresented populations. Trainees gain hands-on experience in EHR-based cohort construction, multimodal data integration, algorithm development and validation, and the translation of informatics tools into practice, with opportunities to collaborate with clinical experts across these domains.

Key words
precision medicine, ehr, data science, phenotyping, informatics

Philip Williams, PhD

Assistant Professor

Program affiliation
Neurosciences
Developmental Regenerative and Stem Cell Biology

Research summary
Strategies to improve outcomes of nervous system injury and disease, regeneration and preservation

Key words

David Wilson, MD, PhD

Professor

Program affiliation
Developmental Regenerative and Stem Cell Biology
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology

Research summary
Role of transcription factors in differentiation and development

Key words
embryonic development, lung development, mouse models, transcriptional regulation

Michael Wong, MD, PhD

Professor

Program affiliation
Neurosciences

Research summary
Mechanisms of epileptogenesis and seizure-induced brain injury

Key words
epilepsy, glia, imaging, multi-photon microscopy, neurophysiology

Matthew Wood, PhD

Assistant Professor

Program affiliation
Molecular Cell Biology
Neurosciences

Research summary
Repair and regeneration following nerve injury and soft tissue injury

Key words
Plastic Surgery, Peripheral nerve, Regeneration, Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials

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