Physics professor uses grant to bring math and biology together
Ovidiu Lipan, an assistant professor of physics, with the help of professors in the departments of biology and mathematics, has received an Interdisciplinary Training for Undergraduates in Biological and Mathematical Sciences (UBM) grant from the National Science Foundation for $134,028.
The grant, which will allow Lipan to support a total of 12 students (two biology majors and two math majors per year) for three years, will be used to introduce mathematics students to the science lab while allowing biology students to become more comfortable integrating quantitative science into their research.
Lipan was hired three years ago as part of the University of Richmond’s first grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Lipan’s training as a theoretical physicist and his interest in applying mathematics and physics to the biological sciences has allowed him to cross boundaries between three departments on campus—something that is unusual but, Lipan claims, very logical.
“The barriers between mathematics and biology didn’t exist for me because I was a physicist. Physicists are trained in both experimental and theoretical physics, but, because physics is a relatively mature field, they must eventually choose to excel in one side of the other,” Lipan said. “Molecular biology, and particularly molecular medicine, is relatively young and there is still a real need to produce scientists who can be bridges between theory and experiment.”
Lipan, who earned a Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago, crossed the barrier he refers to soon after beginning a postdoctoral program at Harvard Medical School’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Studying circadian circuits with Dr. Wing Wong and Dr. Charles Wietz, Lipan realized that, in order to decipher signals of genetic circuits, he would need to first create his own data. He needed to learn how to pipette, he said.
At the Medical College of Georgia, Lipan found a group of pathologists, Stephen C. Peiper, Zixuan Wang and Jean-Marc Navenot, who were willing to teach a physicist basic molecular biology techniques. His first experiments produced good results with clear mathematical patterns.
Today, Lipan runs a lab in Richmond’s Gottwald Science Center that’s a hybrid between a ‘wet’ biology lab and a ‘dry’ mathematics and physics lab. Students use mathematical models, in particular differential equations models with an emphasis on modeling stochastic dynamical systems, to design their experiments and rely on basic molecular biology assays, to generate data.
With the grant, Lipan and his colleagues will take four students per year through a three-part program that begins in the spring semester. Students will be introduced to a scientific problem and the work done thus far.
Math students will work under Lipan and mathematics professor Lester Caudill while biology students will be supervised by biologists Laura Runyen-Janecky and Scott Knight. The faculty and students will meet together as a group regularly, and later in the semester, math students will begin learning basic cell culture techniques and become familiar with the fluorescent activated flow cytometer. Likewise, the biology students will familiarize themselves with the use of differential equations to model biological feedback loops in the stress system. By the end of the spring semester, the students will have designed their summer experiment.
During the summer, the students will carry out the experiment over the course of 10 weeks, breaking up into teams of two—one biology student and one math student working together on the same experiment. By the fall, they will be ready to analyze the data and write up their results. The following year, two students from the previous year will be retained to help recruit, train and collaborate with new team members.
The receipt of this grant happens to correspond with the fall 2009 launch of a new HHMI-supported ‘super-course’ called integrated quantitative (IQ) science. High achieving science students who elect to take the course will simultaneously learn about biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science during an intensive two-semester course led by professors in all five scientific disciplines. All students who enroll in IQ science will be guaranteed an interdisciplinary summer research experience at the conclusion of the course.