Alan Jasanoff is an associate professor of biological engineering and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, with appointments also in the Departments of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and Nuclear Science and Engineering.

His work focuses on the development of “next generation” neuroimaging techniques designed to provide large-scale molecular and cellular information noninvasively from living brains.  Much of the Jasanoff laboratory’s research involves the creation and application of MRI-detectable probes of neuronal signaling. Probes are derived from small molecules, engineered proteins, or nanoparticles that affect MRI contrast to varying extents depending on the presence of molecular targets in the brain. The Jasanoff group also uses advanced functional MRI methods, in conjunction with other physiological measurement techniques, to study systems-level neural function and plasticity animals. 

Jasanoff earned an MPhil in chemistry from Cambridge University and a PhD in biophysics from Harvard University, and then became a Whitehead Fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research before joining the MIT faculty in 2004. He was named a Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation Scholar in 2004 and received the McKnight Technological Innovations in Neuroscience Award in 2006. Jasanoff was also a 2007 recipient of the Director's New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health.

Manolis Kellis is an associate professor of Computer Science at MIT in the area of Computational Biology, a principal investigator at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and a member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He leads the MIT Computational Biology Group.

Professor Kellis’ expertise is in the areas of computational biology, genomics, epigenomics, gene regulation, and genome evolution. His group specifically seeks to understand how the genome sequence leads to the unique biology of each person, through understanding the functional building blocks of the human genome, their interconnections, and their association with disease and health phenotypes.

His work spans four areas: In the area of genome interpretation, he has developed comparative genomics methods to identify genes and regulatory elements systematically in the human genome. In the area of gene regulation, Kellis studies the regulatory motifs involved in cell type specification during development, their combinatorial relationships, and how these establish expression domains in the developing embryo. In the area of epigenomics, Kellis has uncovered chromatin signatures associated with distinct functions across multiple cell types, and sequence signals responsible for their establishment and maintenance. In the area of evolutionary genomics and phylogenomics, Kellis has studied the dynamics of gene phylogenies across complete genomes, the emergence of new gene functions by duplication and mutation, and has defined signatures for measuring selection within the human population.

As a geneticist and cell biologist, Mary-Lou Pardue has studied eukaryotic chromosomes with emphasis on sequences involved in the structure and function of chromosomes as organelles. Her group has found that the telomeres of the Drosophila chromosome are composed of multiple copies of two transposable elements rather than the short repeats, generated by telomerase, on the chromosome ends of most eukaryotic organisms.

The group speculates that the transposable elements that form Drosophila telomeres are evolutionarily related to components of telomerase. This speculation suggests that other transposable elements, those usually thought to be “parasites,” may also have evolved from mechanisms that the cell uses to maintain its chromosomes. This study may offer insights into both the evolution of chromosomes and the evolution of transposable elements and viruses.

A contributor to more than 300 papers, Ploegh comes to Whitehead from the Harvard Medical School where, as professor of pathology, he has been heading the school’s immunology program since 1997.

Prior to that, Ploegh was a professor of biology at MIT, working in the Center for Cancer Research. One of the world’s leading researchers in immune system behavior, Ploegh studies the various tactics that viruses employ to evade our immune responses, and the ways in which our immune system distinguishes friend from foe.

Rahul Sarpeshkar is an associate professorand heads a research group on Bioelectronics. He is the author of Ultra Low Power Bioelectronics: Fundamentals, Biomedical Applications and Bio-inspired Systems.

He has received multiple awards for his interdisciplinary bioengineering research, including the Packard award, given to outstanding faculty. He holds more than 25 patents and has authored more than 100 publications, including one that was featured on the cover of Nature. He is the inventor of the RF cochlea and has founded the field of cytomorphic electronics. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Technology Review and New Scientist.

Peter So is a professor in the departments of mechanical and biological engineering at MIT. So obtained his PhD from Princeton University in 1992 and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral associate in the Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics in the University of Illinois in Urban-Champaign.

His research focuses on developing high resolution and high information content microscopic imaging instruments. These instruments are applied in biomedical studies such as the noninvasive optical biopsy of cancer, the mechanotransduction processes in cardiovascular diseases, and the effects of neuronal remodeling on memory plasticity.

Collin M. Stultz is a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE) at MIT. Stultz received an AB from Harvard College in 1988, and an MD from Harvard Medical School as well as a PhD in biophysics from Harvard in 1997. He is a board-certified internist and cardiologist. 

An alumnus of the Harvard-MIT program in Health Sciences and Technology, Stultz is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and an associate professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He is a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Among his honors are being a recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in Biomedical Sciences and the James Tolbert Shipley Prize.

Peter Szolovits has taught at MIT for more than 35 years as a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

He has served on journal editorial boards and as program chairman and on the program committees of national conferences. He has been a founder of and consultant for several companies that apply AI to problems of commercial interest.

He received his bachelor's degree in physics and his PhD in information science from Caltech. Szolovits was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and is a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the American College of Medical Informatics and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He also serves as a member of the National Research Council's Computer Science and Telecommunications Board.