Edroaldo Lummertz da Rocha, Ph.D.

Edroaldo Lummertz da Rocha, Ph.D, is an assistant professor of immunology and systems biology at Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Pediatrics at Dell Medical School. Lummertz da Rocha completed his training in stem cells, cancer and systems biology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where he focused on the development of systems biology and single-cell genomics to infer cell differentiation trajectories, predict gene regulatory networks and reconstruct intercellular communication networks from multidimensional data.

One of the Lummertz da Rocha lab’s main research efforts is focused on developing and applying novel data science algorithms to understand cell differentiation and cell-cell interactions within a complex tissue microenvironment in health and disease. The lab is particularly interested in childhood cancers. Understanding the systemic and dynamic processes underlying cellular and molecular alterations in tissue microenvironments during disease progression will allow the laboratory to pursue new therapeutic opportunities to target the supportive niche that cancer cells establish to support their growth and metastatic spread. Additionally, the Lummertz da Rocha lab is interested in understanding mechanisms that control stem cell differentiation within the stem cell niche, and harness this knowledge to engineer clinically relevant hematopoietic and immune cell types for cell therapy. Using an interdisciplinary approach integrating computer science with experimental biology, the laboratory seeks to advance our current knowledge of cancer development and stem cell differentiation.