Research Interests
Winston Timp, an associate professor of biomedical engineering, focuses on the development and application of sequencing technologies to gain a deeper understanding of biology and a more accurate set of clinical tools for human disease. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics and the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Timp’s research integrates the principles of biophysics, molecular biology and computational biology to create new tools for exploring the epigenomes and genomes of different lifeforms ranging in size from the flu virus to hummingbirds to California redwoods. Based on the knowledge gained from these studies, Timp and his team apply their toolsets to clinical samples for the diagnosis, surveillance, and treatment of human disease.
Recent projects range from using nanopore sequencing to diagnose infectious disease, characterizing the epigenome of colon cancer, reading the transcriptome of the hummingbird, and assembling the genome of the giant sequoia. Timp holds two licensed patents for his work and was awarded a $2 million grant in 2017 and another $3 million grant in 2019 as part of the “Novel Nucleic Acid Sequencing Technology Development” project funded through the National Human Genome Research Institute. He is also part of a Human Frontier Science Program grant on the extreme metabolism of hummingbirds and a National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers (IUCRC) consortium grant on Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell genomics and epigenomics.
Timp is a member of the Biophysical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Society of Genetics, and sits on the editorial board for Epigenetic Insights and is a bioRxiv Affiliate. He was part of cross-divisional teams that won Johns Hopkins Discovery Awards in 2017 for a project resolving transcriptome architecture using single molecule direct RNA sequencing, in 2016 for exploring the “essentialome” of the Candida glabrata organism, and in 2015 for a project using sequencing-based transcription factor binding quantification for synthetic biology. He also received a Johns Hopkins Catalyst Award in 2016 for his work in nanopore sequencing.
Timp received bachelor’s degrees in biochemistry, chemistry, physics and electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana in 2001 and 2002. He then earned his master’s degree and PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked at the Whitehead Institute, focusing his thesis work on the study of cellular communication in a 3-D microenvironment. After receiving his doctorate, Timp trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins, studying the epigenetics of cancer. He joined the faculty of the Whiting School of Engineering in 2013.
Titles
- Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering
- Associate Professor, Molecular Biology & Genetics
- Associate Professor, Medicine, Division of Infectious Disease
Affiliated Centers & Institutes
Education
- PhD, Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007
- MS, Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005
- BS, Biochemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002
- BS, Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002
- BS, Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2002
- BS, Electrical Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001
Recent Highlights
-
December 8, 202041 multidisciplinary endeavors have been selected to receive support this year from Johns Hopkins University's Discovery Awards program. Eight of these endeavors include faculty from the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
-
June 10, 2020Johns Hopkins scientists studying the virus that causes COVID-19 say the pathogen has few variations, a promising observation that boosts the chances of developing an effective vaccine.
-
February 25, 2020In search of new ways to sequence human genomes and read critical alterations in DNA, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have successfully used the gene cutting tool CRISPR to make cuts in DNA around lengthy tumor genes, which can be used to collect sequence information.