Openings
For students and postdocs who may want to join my research group
I am affiliated with Gilbert S. Omenn Department of Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics (DCMB) and Department of Mathematics.
The first thing I want to say is that, to join my group, you do not need to be interested in biology or medicine (assuming math PhD study or postdoc) or strong in math. However, I am almost exclusively doing network science (theory and applications), so I need to assume your interest in networks. Networks are fun! This being said, if you are 100% supported by external money, I am comfortable with hosting/mentoring you even if you are away from network science.
If you are interested in doing a graduate study in my DCMB group, you should seek admission via either (i) Bioinformatics Program under PIBS for a PhD study, or (ii) DCMB Master's Program. In the case of (i), you will do 3-4 rotation projects in the first year, and choose one of them as your PhD lab. In the case of (ii), you need to pay stipend+tuition yourself, but if you perform well in my group and I have fund, you master course can seamlessly turn into your PhD study (and you don't need to pay from there). A certain fraction of PhD students become PhD students via this second route. In both routes, you typically do not need to do teaching.
If you are interested in doing a graduate study in Math, the PhD program you should apply for is Applied and Interdisciplinary Mathematics PhD (AIMS). Students are typically hired as GSI (Graduate Student Instructor) and teach, as many mathematics PhD students do across US universities. When I have research fund, I would financially support them to lighten/remove teaching for some semesters. A majority of my PhD students so far I have advised in the US (State University of New York at Buffalo, where I was, and University of Michigan) have received such funding in some semesters. Scientifically, some students in math in my research group are interested in network science theory/numerics without biology/medicine. Other students are interested in network science related to biology/medicine or primarily in biology/medicine. Both are fine and within the scope of AIMS (in my view).
Department of Mathematics usually has departmental postdoc openings for 3 years, so you are welcome to apply. This one carries a decent amount of teaching, so, in my view, a reasonable teaching experience is probably desired.
Other postdoc opportunities (DCMB and Math) depend on research funding I have. I have had funding to hire 1-2 postdocs, continuously, in the last 15 years.
If you are interested in joining my group, please contact me at my email address shown to the left bar on this webpage or the institutional one (which you can easily find) with your CV. I will answer only if your email is personalized to me. If you intend to apply for a PhD (in either department) or departmental postdoc (Department of Mathematics), please do contact me before you apply.
As I wrote above, math students' (and postdocs') interests do not have to align with biology or medicine. I also do a lot of theoretical things in network science apart from biomedicine (obvious from my publication list). Math students/postdocs who are interested in biology/medicine are of course very welcome, too. Theoretical topics I have been working on nowadays include temporal networks, early warning signals, random walks on networks, nonlinear dynamics on networks, multilayer networks, graphons, community and core detection, and evolutionary games on networks (and this is not an exhaustive list).
On the DCMB side, what "computational medicine and bioinformatics" means should be broadly construed with me. Currently, I am mainly working on genomics, neuroimaging (particularly, functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data), and social networks in public health, each with domain experts. This looks too diverse, and it is. However, my goal in this research thread is to develop and apply network methods to create knowledge useful for medicine and biology (not just to amuse theoreticians), very often in collaboration with domain experts. Anybody interested in any of those or other topics where network approach may be useful is welcome to approach me.
I individually meet each student and postdoc one hour per week, and in person except when either party is traveling. In addition to that, I have group coffee/lunch about 2-3 times a month, which anybody can (but they do not have to) join.