Joseph Distefano

Biography

Professor DiStefano was born in New York in 1938, graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1956, received the BEE in Electrical Engineering from CCNY in 1961, and MS and PhD degrees from UCLA in 1964 & 1966, in the fields of Control Systems (MS) and Biocybernetics, Computer Methodology and Applied Mathematics (PhD), with minor field studies in Physiology. He joined the UCLA Engineering faculty in 1966, Medicine faculty in 1970, Computer Science faculty in 1982 and Cybernetics Inderdepartmental Program (IDP), as Chair, in 1981. He received a Distinguished Teaching Award in Engineering in 1971, was a Senior Fulbright-Hays Scholar in Italy in 1979, was awarded the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 2003 and the Lockeed-Martin Award for Teaching Excellence in 2004. Currently, he Chairs the Cybernetics IDP, the Computational Systems Biology graduate program in Computer Science, Co-Chairs the Biocybernetics Subfield in the Biomedical Engineering IDP and is the Director of the Biocybernetics Research Laboratory

Research Interest

His research areas include systems biology, biocybernetics, PK/PD, multicompartmental and other dynamic systems modeling and optimization methodology, expert systems applications in life sciences research, endocrine system physiology and control, optimal experiment design, thyroid hormone regulation & metabolism in mammals and fishes, and disease (cancer, HCV, diabetes) process dynamics and optimal therapies.