About Our Research

Research Goal

We want to build up a complete picture of all the key steps, from sensing of glucose and other signals to secretion of insulin by pancreatic beta cells. The goal is to understand how the individual steps are coordinated and finally relate impairments in those processes to the pathogenesis of diabetes.

Applying our Research

The basic theoretical work we do helps guide experiments, making them more efficient by providing a roadmap. Advances in understanding insulin secretion in health and disease will contribute to making more intelligent interventions to prevent and treat disease. It will also be a landmark success in integrating knowledge on many levels to understand a complex system of biomedical importance.

Need for Further Study

How does beta cell dysfunction lead to diabetes? How do cells regulate their properties to stay within the functional range in the face of changing conditions?

Mathematical Models

Our lab maintains “gold standard” versions of our published mathematical models. View our models organized by:

• Subject on our Mathematical Models page
• Publication citation on our GitHub.com page

Lectures

• Prevention, Pathogenesis and Reversal of Type 2 Diabetes, lecture at Fields Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 2014
• Bistability of Beta-Cell Mass in Type 2 Diabetes, lecture at Mathematical Biosciences Institute, 2013
• Biological and Mathematical Perspectives on the Classification of Bursting Mechanisms, lecture at Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) Life Sciences meeting, 2012
• Cross-Currents Between Biology and Mathematics on Models of Bursting, lecture at Mathematical Biosciences Institute, Ohio State University, 2011