Kevin Janes

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering (effective August, 2008)

B.S., Biomedical Engineering, The Johns Hopkins University, 1999
Ph.D., Bioengineering, MIT, 2005

Biomedical Engineering
Box 800759
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia 22908

kjanes@virginia.edu

Research Interests

Changes in cellular behavior underlie development, disease, and homeostasis. The response of cells to external factors depends upon the synthesis, degradation, and modification of genes and proteins. These regulated events act as "signals" for coordinating cell function. Intracellular signaling is highly dynamic, interconnected, and context dependent, making it difficult to predict how any one signal contributes to the control of cell fate. Understanding how signaling networks enable cells to respond to their environment is important for diseases such as cancer, where the molecular "signal processing" has gone awry and cellular responses are inappropriate.

Our group develops experimental and computational techniques for quantitatively monitoring signaling networks as they become activated by diverse stimuli and perturbations. These tools allow us to collect complex datasets, which can be analyzed by "data-driven" modeling to address network-level questions about signal transduction. Fundamentally, our approach is problem driven, involving techniques that range from enzyme-activity assays in cell populations to gene-expression measurements in individual microdissected cells. We are currently interested in studying the tissue responses of colonic epithelia and the morphogenetic responses of 3D-cultured mammary epithelia in vitro.

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