Research Groups

Faculty in the Physiology department are involved in integrative multidisciplinary research that spans multiple organ systems and diseases. One of the goals of our research is to find treatment strategies to prevent or treat diseases.

The different research groups and the associated faculty are listed below in alphabetical order

Cancer Biology

Focus: Identifying the signaling pathways that lead to the development and progression of breast cancer as well as mechanisms promoting liver cancer and cancer immunology. Faculty in this research group are also part of a broader university-wide group "Breast Cancer Signaling Network".

Cardiovascular Physiology

Focus: Cardiac energetics, mitochondrial physiology, non-linear dynamical systems modeling, ischemia/reperfusion injury and ischemic heart disease, autonomic and cardiovascular dysfunction under different conditions including spinal cord injury.

Bazil

DiCarlo

Wiseman

Diabetes and Obesity

Focus: Identifying how diet (high fat), diabetes, leptin, and inflammation impacts organ function directly and systemically.

Education and Human Learning

Focus: Research in teaching and learning, including studies of pedagogy and educational interventions associated with conceptual learning, affect, metacognition, equity, inclusion, and the use of technology, with a special emphasis on the learning of physiology and the physiology of learning.

Gastrointestinal Health and Disease

Focus: Gastrointestinal function and disease, including inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, cancer, cystic fibrosis, and bile atresia; Effect of gut microbiota in the pathophysiology of disease processes.

Gulbransen

McCabe

Parameswaran

Immunity and Tissue Inflammation

Focus: Role of innate and adaptive immune cells in disease processes; inflammatory cell signaling pathways in various tissues; role of non-immune cells in tissue inflammation and disease.

Molecular Metabolism and Disease

Focus: Understanding mechanisms accounting for disease development, progression and complications (retinopathy, osteoporosis, bone marrow pathology, artherosclerosis and neuroendocrine changes). Diabetes and Inflammatory bowel disease are focus areas.

Neuroscience

Focus: Neural regulation of organ system function, including metabolism, intestinal motility, cardiovascular system, spinal cord regeneration, glaucoma, and Parkinson’s disease.