Our research focuses on understanding physiologic dynamics and the mechanisms of control and interaction of physiological systems, where we utilize concepts and methods from statistical physics and nonlinear dynamics. Our studies have shown that physiologic fluctuations carry important information of diagnostic and prognostic value, and that physiological systems are controlled by feedback mechanisms and exhibit emergent properties across space and time scales, similar to certain physical systems characterized by scale-invariant behavior and self-organized criticality.

We investigate how physiologic dynamics change under different physiologic states (such as sleep stages, circadian phases, levels of physical activity) and under pathologic perturbations. Our investigations encompass several physiologic systems in their interaction – from the cellular and molecular length scales to the system level – to develop a map of communications between organ systems, a new area of research we call Network Physiology. These approaches aim to understand how dynamical outputs of physiological systems emerge from intrinsic microscopic interactions.