Zhilin Qu, PhD                                    

Professor of Medicine

Co-director, Cardiac Computation Lab

Department of Medicine, Division of Cardiology

University of California, Los Angeles

A2-237 CHS, 650 Charles E. Young Dr. South

Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Email: zqu@mednet.ucla.edu

Phone: 310-794-6050; Fax: 310-206-9133

     I got my PhD in physics from Beijing Normal University in 1994, majoring in nonlinear dynamics and non-equilibrium statistical physics. In 1995, I joined the Cardiovascular Research Laboratories at UCLA as a postdoctoral fellow. Since then, I have applied my background in mathematics, nonlinear dynamics, and statistical physics to study the mechanisms of cardiac arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, cardiac metabolism, cell cycle control, and signal transduction, in close collaboration with experimental biologists. Multi-scale modeling and systems biology approaches are used for systems-level understanding of these complex systems. I share the philosophy that nature is complex, yet the complexity emerges from the collective interactions of its parts governed by simple rules. As a computational and theoretical biologist, I believe that it is always useful to follow Paul Dirac's advice: "A theory with mathematical beauty is more likely to be correct than an ugly one that fits some experimental data," and the one from Albert Einstein: "Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler."

Curriculum Vitae

 

Education

1987: BS in physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing.

1990: MS in physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing.

1994: PhD in physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing.

 

Positions

7/1994—7/1995: Instructor, Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing.

8/1995—6/1999: Postgraduate researcher, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

7/1999—12/2000: Assistant researcher, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

1/2001-6/2001: Assistant adjunct professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

7/2001-6/2007: Assistant professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

7/2007-6/2011: Associate professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

7/2011-present: Professor, Department of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

 

Honors and Awards

1997: American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellowship Award.

1998: First award: Science and Technology Progress Award of China National Education Council.

1999: Third award: National Science Award of China.

2005: Third award: UCLA Department of Medicine Research Day.

 

Research Interests

1. Multi-scale modeling of the heart

Calcium sparks and waves in a computer model of ventricular myocyte (Nivala et al, Front Physiol 2012)

        Electrical turbulence in a computer model of dog heart (Xie et al, JCI 2004)

       Electrical turbulence in a computer model of 3D cardiac tissue slab (Qu et al, Biophys J 2000)

 

2. Computational systems biology

A protein ubiquitination and degradation model (Xu et al, PLOS one 2012)

A model of cell cycle control (Yang et al, JTB 2006)

3. Nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics

Scroll filament dynamics in a 3D excitable medium (Qu et al, PRL 1999)

Publication list

Pubmed

Google Scholar

Full list