Harley McAdams Stanford University School of Medicine

Dr. McAdams investigates the control system that bacterial cells create from biochemical and genetic components to organize and direct cell functions using both computational and experimental approaches. He has been a pioneer in applying systems engineering approaches to the study of biological regulation. His contributions have included demonstration that circuit simulation approaches analogous to electrical engineering circuit analyses could be applied to biological regulatory circuits, and identification of the critical importance of inevitable random variations in genetic chemical reaction rates on development of organisms. His current research addresses how the dynamic three-dimensional organization of cellular components affects genetic regulation and determination of the global regulatory circuitry that controls the Caulobacter crescentus cell cycle. Before entering biological research, Dr. McAdams spent many years at Bell Laboratories and Lockheed Missile and Space company. He received the PhD degree in Physics from Rice University.