Elebeoba May
Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Wisconsin Institute for Discovery
Associate Professor
WID Room 2114
330 North Orchard Street
Madison, WI 53706
Education
Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, PhD/MS/BS
Research Areas
- Computational Biology and AI
- Personalized Medicine
- Synthetic & Systems Biology
Multi-scale mechanisms of multicellular dynamics, response, and structure in host-pathogen and microbial communities
The focus of our lab is on understanding spatiotemporal dynamics of immune response and microbes using in silico, in vitro, and ex vivo models. We develop analytical characterization tools, and multi-scale theoretical models that integrate agent based and biochemical network models (May & Sershen, 2016), and leverage machine learning methods for model optimization and analysis. Application areas include the investigation of TB granuloma formation to determine the contribution of physiological and structural immune response to infection outcome (Sershen, et al. 2016), and effects of comorbidity (e.g., micronutrient deficiency, age) on immune response (Gough, et al. 2019); exploration of the proinflammatory microenvironments to define synergistic modulation of macrophage effector response (Salim, et al. 2016); mouse models of nutrient deficiency and comorbidity effects on macrophage response; and multiscale models of microbial populations and the response of non-pathogenic and pathogenic bacteria to stress (Latif & May, 2018), including M. smegmatis, M. bovis BCG, F. tularensis LVS, and E. coli. In our lab, data generation and model generation go hand in hand. Students are trained as interdisciplinary scientists and use computational, mathematical, and experimental methods to address their research question.