Biomedical Research: The UCI School of Physical Sciences is producing complex and important breakthroughs central to the future of health care. We go beyond traditional science with innovative solutions including creating artificial antibodies with mechanical energy to show how proteins might be chemically manipulated to treat human disease.

Personalized Medicine: Our mathematicians use quantitative approaches, coupled with clinical and experimental data, to provide solutions for public health issues. If applied in clinical settings, such methods can allow doctors to better tailor treatment approaches to patients’ needs, and thus improve the long-term outcome of therapy.

Imaging and Diagnostics: Chemists, mathematicians and physicists are the vital trifecta in creating world-class imaging and diagnostic tools. Nanodevices are the future and our faculty are leading the way, building the next generation of sensors, specifically the enzymes and receptors that recognize disease-associated molecules.

Big Data: Our chemists and mathematicians inject quantitative analyses to biological systems to understand disease at its core mechanisms. Our visionary evaluation and study of atoms and their bonds, along with the mathematics of elements, will have a significant impact on further understanding our genetic makeup.

Planetary Health: New extremes in climate and changing ecosystems are allowing infectious diseases to expand into new areas. Concurrently, expanding agriculture and urban development are modifying air and water quality, with important consequences for ecosystem services. Intensifying heat waves may trap atmospheric pollutants near the surface, amplifying health risks associated with physiological responses to extreme heat. Earth system scientists are studying the interactions between these different drivers to predict future changes in disease and to design more effective health care.