Project PI Feng Fu was promoted to associate professor with tenure in July 2021. As a COBRE project lead, Feng worked on mathematical and computational models for understanding efficacies of immune checkpoint inhibitors and their potential combinations in the past three years. Feng said, “I am very grateful for the COBRE support which brings momentum in my career development at Dartmouth. It helps consolidate my research program in biomedical research and also synergistically interacts with my teaching and research mentoring activities.” In the future, Feng will continue the work along with interactions and collaborations within the CQB community.
Project Leader
Dr. Fu’s background in applied math and training in mathematical biology enables him to do interdisciplinary work, ranging from natural sciences to social sciences to biomedical sciences. He combines mathematical modeling approaches with analyses of experimental and observational data, for a better understanding of (1) the evolution of cooperation, (2) behavior-disease interactions, and (3) cancer evolution.
Dr. Fu’s previous work covers a wide range of important topics in mathematical biology, with a particular emphasis on social networks, human behavior and public health, including the evolution of cooperation in dynamical social networks, the evolution of in-group favoritism, the evolution of homophily, and imitation behavior of vaccination and its impact on public health. At the moment, his research is mainly focused on stochastic modeling of cancer evolution and infectious diseases as well as on the emergence of drug resistance, with particular respect to cancer and HIV treatments. Since 2017, he has co-directed the Dartmouth Mathematics REU Summer Program, and so far have supervised 15 REU students in total.