Department of Neurosurgery

Background

Dr. Jay Hou received his B.S. in Physics and his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at the National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Later, he joined Dr. Robert Mauck’s Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and developed a high-throughput mechanical device to investigate the stiffness and diffusivity of tissue constructs. He received his PhD in 2018 from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Columbia University, advised by Dr. Gerard Ateshian. During his PhD, he developed a novel multiphasic and multiscale cell-tissue finite element computational model to study the mechanics, transport, and physiology of chondrocytes within cartilage.

Dr. Jay Hou’s postdoctoral training was conducted in Dr. David Odde’s Laboratory at the University of Minnesota. In his postdoc, he applied the biophysical modeling to study glioblastoma cell migration under various mechanical and biophysical conditions. He further applied the biophysical modeling, drug inhibition, and bioinformatic analysis to explore the physical and molecular mechanisms of heterogeneous cell migration in glioblastoma PDX and primary patient cells.

Dr. Jay Hou joined the Neurosurgery faculty in 2024 and founded the Brain Tumor Computational Laboratory. His research focuses on developing computational, bioinformatic, and machine-learning frameworks—integrated with experimental approaches—to investigate glioblastoma cell migration and tumor progression under chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

Education

2004, B.S. Physics, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

2007, M.S. Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

2018, Ph.D. Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

2023, Postdoctoral Associate, Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
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Lab link: Brain Tumor Computational Laboratory (https://sites.brown.edu › brain-tumor-computational-lab)