The fall semester marked the arrival of three new faculty members at the Whiting School.

Joining the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Institute for Computational Medicine (ICM) are professor Natalia Trayanova and assistant professor Rachel Karchin.

Trayanova is recognized internationally as a leader in the field of computational cardiac electrophysiology. In her Computational Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory at the ICM, Trayanova is developing cutting-edge computational tools and simulation-experiment approaches to advance understanding of the fundamental mechanisms that underlie rhythm disorders in the heart. She is developing strategies to prevent and treat these disorders. Trayanova received her PhD from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University.

Karchin’s research is focused on using computational tools to understand and predict the functional consequences of genetic variants. Her research integrates information from molecular modeling and sequence analysis with clinical patient data and in vitro functional studies. This provides insights into the functional mechanisms of proteins and their role in human disease, including inherited cancer susceptibilities and variation in drug response. Karchin received her PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Also new on campus this fall is Dilipkumar Asthagiri, who joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as an assistant professor. Asthagiri’s research includes hydration phenomena and statistical mechanics of aqueous systems, ab initio molecular dynamics approaches to chemistry in liquids, and metal-protein and protein-protein interactions. Asthagiri received his PhD from the University of Delaware and came to the Whiting School from Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he was a technical staff member.