Research Centers
Center for Biology and Society: The Center is home to research projects that draw on the interdisciplinary strengths of the programs in History and Philosophy of Science; Bioethics, Policy, and Law; and Communicating Science. While faculty members and students carry out their individual research activities, the Center supports projects that are collaborative and cut across traditional academic boundaries. Projects like these provide opportunities for graduate and undergraduate student research and for postdoctoral fellows and visiting researchers.
Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity: The Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity leverages the emerging field of complex systems to foster interdisciplinary research on fundamental questions of social life. The Center brings together scientists from such diverse fields as anthropology, biology, mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology, and sociology to collaborate in cross-disciplinary teams.
Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology: Infectious disease causes 35 percent of deaths worldwide, and is the world’s biggest killer of children and young adults. Our researchers are focused on basic bacterial and viral infectious disease processes and the design and use of vaccines and protein therapeutics to combat infectious diseases. These include newly-emerging pathogens and potential biowarfare agents. We are devising new and effective ways of producing advanced vaccines and therapeutics, such as through the use of recombinant attenuated bacteria and viruses and genetically modified plants, and transferring this technology to the developing world to help fight diseases.
Evolutionary Functional Genomics: Since its inception in 2002, scientists in the Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics (EFG) have leveraged innovations in information technology into tools for testing long-standing biological problems. The recent ability to obtain the complete DNA sequence information of any organism, or genome, has allowed us to map and explore the genetic blueprints necessary for life as well as their evolution. We are developing new methods for exploring the gene interactions that guide the maturation of a single fertilized egg cell into a complex adult animal with trillions of cells and building easy-to-use computer software for the analysis of genomic databases. Using developmental gene expression image data from Drosophila, we are developing the first-of-a-kind computational tool and web resource for the digital analysis of developmental gene expression patterns.
LTER: The Central Arizona–Phoenix Long-Term Ecological Research (CAP LTER) project is one of 24 long-term sites funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). LTER sites have tended to focus upon pristine locations well removed from the myriad effects brought about by extensive human modification and dominance of ecosystems.
Photosynthesis Center: The ASU Center for Bioenergy & Photosynthesis (CB&P) will carry out frontier multidisciplinary scientific research designed to use biological and biologically-based artificial systems to address societal energy needs in a sustainable manner, with an emphasis on solar energy conversion and bioinspired energy transformation to meet human needs.
Social Insect Research Group: Understanding the genetic, neurobiological, and physiological foundations of such social behavior, and analyzing the behavioral mechanisms of the communication systems by which cooperative interactions and division of labor among hundreds of thousands of individuals is regulated, is one of the goals of the Social Insect Study Group at the School of Life Sciences of the Arizona State University. We are also interested in understanding the evolutionary interplay of cooperation and conflict in insect societies, and in the analyses of foraging strategies, competition, territorial tactics, and collective decision making. Furthermore we investigate life cycle strategies and sociogenesis, molecular phylogenics and behavior-ecological mechanisms of speciation.