Dr. Tian Hong
Dr. Monica “Mona” Papes
NIMBioS welcomes two new NIMBioS-affiliated assistant professors to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, beginning in January 2017.
Tian Hong will join the Department of Biochemistry and Cellular and Molecular Biology as assistant professor of computational biology. Hong’s research focuses on mathematical modeling of cellular heterogeneity and plasticity and its application in understanding immune response, development and cancer progression. Hong is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Irvine.
Monica Papes will join the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology as an assistant professor in spatial biology. Papes’ research focuses on theoretical and applied investigations centered on species’ distributions. She uses ecological niche modeling techniques with GIS and remote sensing tools to study the factors that shape species’ geographic distributions. Papes is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at Oklahoma State University.
As both Hong’s and Papes’ research intersects the focus of NIMBioS, both will be affiliated with NIMBioS. Faculty members on the NIMBioS leadership team served on the hiring committees.