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Orly Alter, Ph.D.

Orly Alter, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Orly Alter, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Fellow, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology

  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Department of Biomedical Engineering
    Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
    The University of Texas at Austin
    1 University Station A4800
    Austin, Texas 78712-0159
    (512) 471-7939 (phone)
    (512) 471-2149 (fax)
  • Lab Website
  • Office Hours: By appointment

Research Interests

Research in Dr. Alter's Genomic Signal Processing Lab is motivated by recent high-throughput technologies, such as DNA microarrays, which make it possible to record the complete genomic signals that guide the progression of cellular processes. Future discovery and control in biology and medicine will come from the mathematical modeling of such large-scale molecular biological data, just as Kepler discovered the laws of planetary motion by using mathematics to describe trends in astronomical data.1

Dr. Alter, who holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics, develops generalizations of the matrix and tensor computations that underlie theoretical physics and pioneers their use in creating models from data from different studies of the interconnected programs of cell division and cancer. She uses her models to predict biological and physical mechanisms that govern the activity of DNA and RNA, including a previously unknown mechanism of regulation that correlates DNA replication initiation with mRNA expression during cell division.2  Her recent experimental results verify this computational prediction, demonstrating for the first time that mathematical modeling of microarray data can be used to correctly predict previously unknown cellular mechanisms.3  This brings biologists a step closer to one day being able to understand and control the inner workings of the cell as readily as NASA engineers plot the trajectories of spacecraft today.4

Dr. Alter's research is cited in hundreds of publications and patents, is featured in textbooks, and is part of the curriculum of academic courses taught at schools of engineering, natural sciences and medicine.5  Funding for this research comes from the National Human Genome Research Institute,6  the National Science Foundation,7  the American Institute of Mathematics8  and Cancer Research UK.


Selected Publications

BMES Austin 2010
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