Dennis Vitkup is an associate professor in the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Columbia University. His laboratory develops and applies state-of-the-art computational, theoretical and experimental tools to address three primary areas of interest: reconstructing biological networks, understanding the evolution of biological networks and developing efficient methods to simulate networks. Using these techniques, the Vitkup lab aims to gain mechanistic insights into fundamental biological phenomena and to understand specific biological mechanisms underlying human diseases such as autism, schizophrenia and cancer, and to understand the contribution of the microbiome to human disease states.