Our lab is focused on the importance of oscillations and rhythms for living systems. In our own lives, our bodies change over the course of the day and over the course of the year. We are more alert early in the day, and often feel sleepy in the afternoon. The incidence of many diseases is also highly rhythmic. These kinds of oscillations are ubiquitous in biology. Often, they continue even when carefully hold the external environment constant in the lab.

Basic questions about biological oscillations remain unanswered. Is rhythmic physiology fundamentally superior to doing the same thing all the time? How closely do internal rhythms have to match external rhythms for us to remain healthy?

Many diseases are linked to work conditions that disrupt our natural rhythms, but the underlying causes are not clear. It's also unclear what kinds of lifestyles are most disruptive to our body clocks. This is an especially urgent issue as we spend more time indoors and increasingly expose ourselves to lights late at night.

Our goals are to develop experimental and computational approaches to address these questions. We're especially interested in model systems and techniques that have not yet been explored, as these can often open up new understanding.

Below are more detailed descriptions of areas of active research areas in our lab.

Mechanism of Circadian Rhythms	Coupling of Clocks to Metabolism	Evolutionary Fitness and Clocks
Hidden Rhythms in Prokaryotes	Rhythms in Human Activity	Engineering Oscillating Systems