My lab is an interdisciplinary group that devises and experimentally tests computational tools to explore cell type identity and its molecular underpinnings. A unifying component of our research is the gene regulatory network (GRN). GRNs are programs encoded in the genome that define the set of regulatory relationships among genes and gene products. GRNs govern the cell’s transcriptional output both at steady state and in response to perturbations, and thus are major molecular determinants of cell-type identity. We develop new algorithms to reconstruct GRNs, to infer their dynamics (i.e. how they are established during development), and to model intercellular regulatory networks. All of our computational efforts are grounded by the criteria that the resulting hypotheses be experimentally testable, and we use hematopoietic stem cells and articular chondrocytes from both mice and those derived in vitro from pluripotent stem cells to experimentally to inform and to test our algorithms. A central, long-term goal of my lab is to devise generally applicable computational approaches that will enable directing cell fate decisions with precision and efficiency for purposes of regenerative medicine and disease modeling..