Chicago Center for Systems Biology

Chicago, Illinois

The Chicago Center for Systems Biology (CCSB) is one of nine National Centers for Systems Biology funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The Center is located at the University of Chicago and represents a multi-disciplinary collaboration among researchers at Northwestern University and University of Illinois at Chicago, fostered by theChicago Biomedical Consortium (CBC), with support from The Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust. The Center will study one of the most exciting and challenging questions in the field of Systems Biology: “How do multiple genes or proteins, dozens or even hundreds at once, work together in networks to reproducibly give rise to highly complex cells and tissues. For example the networks that regulate stem cells that give rise to our immune system or those that control regularly patterns of photoreceptors in the eye. In the new Center, CCSB will concentrate on transcriptional networks, clusters of the master genes that regulate the activity of other genes by directly turning them on or off. The Center has more than a dozen experts in genomics, developmental biology, evolutionary biology, stress and physiology, chemistry and physics, with several computational specialists who focus on network modeling, and high-performance computing.

Research Topics Currently Explored at the CCSB

• Regulatory Networks
• Evolution and Robustness of networks
• High-throughput microscopy
• Evolutionary genetics
• Model system development
• Fly genomics

Contact for international outreach:

Aharon Solomon, Ph.D.
Research Director, Institute for Genomics & Systems Biology
Phone: +1 773 834 3882

Funding Opportunities:

The CBC awarded $3 million over three years to help establish the Chicago Center for Systems Biology.