Belinda Akpa

Belinda S Akpa is an Associate Professor in the University of Tennessee's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Director of Data Sciences & AI at the National Institute for Modeling Biological Systems. She holds a BA, MEng, and doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Cambridge (UK). A highly interdisciplinary researcher, her current interest is in developing mathematical frameworks that integrate scarce and heterogeneous data to connect molecular phenomena to dynamic physiological outcomes. Akpa is broadly interested in computational biology, but more specifically in how mechanistic mathematical models can be used to inform targeted experimental strategies and support biological decision making under mechanistic uncertainty. To date, her work has touched the fields of pharmacology/toxicology, membrane biophysics, plant physiology, and forensic anthropology.