Scientific Minds and Entrepreneurial Energy Converge in Miller School Department of Cell and Systems Biology
New chair Dr. Leor Weinberger is building a team that values fundamental scientific discovery, entrepreneurial energy and the power of interdisciplinary collaboration.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Shakespeare’s verse echoes through the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, where the Department of Cell Biology didn’t simply change its name but is redefining its very essence.
Under the leadership of Leor Weinberger, Ph.D., its newly appointed chair, the department is evolving into the Department of Cell and Systems Biology. The transformation goes beyond semantics. For Dr. Weinberger, this is about building a new kind of scientific community, one that values fundamental scientific discovery, entrepreneurial energy and the power of interdisciplinary collaboration.
Dr. Weinberger is describing a path he’s carved out in his own work. An internationally recognized pioneer in systems and synthetic biology, he founded numerous companies, including a non-profit, the Institute for Evolvable Medicines, to advance innovative drugs to clinical trials. These ventures exemplify his commitment to bridging the gap between academic research and clinical impact, an approach he will bring to his new role in Miami.
Why Systems Biology?
When asked why he wanted to change the name of his department from cell biology to cell and systems biology, Dr. Weinberger said with a smile, “Apologies, I’m going to get all professorial on you now.”
He traces the rationale to a burgeoning movement among physicists in the late 20th century. Systems biology emerged as physicists and engineers incorporated quantitative and computational methods into biology, aiming to understand how genes and proteins interact to create functioning “circuits,” and not just studying isolated components.
The investigators I hope to attract will want to build systems not just for the sake of being able to build them but to use that deep, mechanistic knowledge to understand how to repair, or break, the underlying biology in order to develop new classes of therapeutics.
Dr. Leor Weinberger
“They brought a wealth of theoretical approaches, conceptual frameworks and computational methods originally developed in physics to bear on biological problems,” said Dr. Weinberger. “As opposed to the common, reductionist approach of studying a gene or protein in isolation, these researchers wanted to understand how a small subset of molecular species — a circuit — fit together mechanistically to create a function, a phenotype, an entire system that performs work, and even how it can adapt and evolve to perform new types of work.”
Some of these scientists decided they had to figure out how to build systems from scratch, a concept often attributed to physicist Richard Feynman’s well-known idiom, “That which I cannot build, I do not understand.”
Dr. Weinberger draws upon that approach as inspiration for the department’s evolution, with a twist. Dr. Weinberger’s teams will build systems to understand their inherent logic, but they will be working toward another, tangible end.
“The investigators I hope to attract will want to build systems not just for the sake of being able to build them,” he said, “but to use that deep, mechanistic knowledge to understand how to repair, or break, the underlying biology in order to develop new classes of therapeutics.”
Dr. Weinberger is enthusiastic about convincing researchers with national reputations and established research programs to join him in Miami. But he hopes the program will attract early-career scientists with promise and ambition, as well.
“Almost invariably, the history of science demonstrates that paradigm-shifting advances arise from those with orthogonal ideas,” he said. “That is what we need: People with fresh theories who want to understand mechanistically and quantitatively how a system functions and then exploit that knowledge to build new therapeutic strategies.”
Pure Research, Practical Invention
The hunger and intellectual talents Dr. Weinberger seeks will translate into significant scientific discovery. But it won’t stop there.
“The dream here is to build the department, and UM, into a discovery ‘engine’ that is ultimately paired to a new biotech ecosystem in Miami to enable the development of new classes of medicines,” he said.
It starts with finding scientists whose careers are marked by creativity and innovation.
“We have to bring in people who are working on things that no one else is working on, those who are doing fundamentally different, nonderivative science,” Dr. Weinberger said. “The goal is to build a cohort of enthusiasm and excitement for bold, fresh ideas.”
Tags: 2025 chairs, Department of Cell and Systems Biology, Dr. Leor Weinberger, Newsroom, weinberger-martemyanov