My quantitative biology research lab uses systematic and synthetic approaches to conquer fundamental problems in understanding gene function in health and disease. I maintain a very diverse research program, encouraging students and postdocs and research technicians to follow their research interests, by developing new tools and approaches to solve long-standing problems in their field of interest. Having successfully trained in different areas (plant molecular biology, molecular parasitology, RNA biology, and human development/disease) my broad language for basic science has expanded my appreciation of systems biology. Consequently, my ability to integrate diverse sources of information has helped develop innovations and ideas that we have shared with other labs, yielding high impact discoveries in multiple fields throughout my career. This includes several examples where I have derived novel approaches in team settings and applied them to basic biology that intersects human disease and complex biological systems.