Richard D. Berlin
Center for Cell Analysis & Modeling

CCAM Faculty

Ann Cowan

Professor of Molecular, Microbial & Structural Biology

Deputy Director, R. D. Berlin Center for Cell Analysis & Modeling

Contact Information

Research Interests

My general research interests center on understanding membrane organization, particularly the organization of structural and functional domains within the plasma membrane. A primary research project explores the development and maintenance of plasma membrane domains during mammalian spermatogenesis using biochemical techniques, high resolution light microscopy, and, in collaboration with Dr. Dennis Koppel, biophysical analyses such as fluorescence photobleaching. A second project involves an ongoing collaboration with Dr. Peter Setlow in the department to analyze the dramatic changes in membrane organization that occur during sporulation in Bacillus subtilis. As Deputy Director of the Center for Cell Analysis and Modeling, I oversee our light microscopy user facility, which provides access to state-of-the-art instrumentation in high-resolution fluorescence microscopy to the general research community. The Center for Biomedical Imaging Technology is also home to the NIH-funded National Resource for Cell Analysis and Modeling (NRCAM). NRCAM develops tools for quantitative cell biology research. Our approach is to combine high resolution quantitative imaging and biochemical analyses with mathematical modeling to develop computational simulations of specific cellular events. NRCAM has created the “Virtual Cell” modeling environment, a tool for creating spatially realistic mathematical models of cellular processes using a web-based interface that is freely available to the academic research community.