Editorial Team
Chief Editor
Rabia Begum, PhD, Springer Nature, London, UK
Rabia studied Biochemistry at Kings College London and received a PhD in neurogenetics from the MRC Prion Unit, UCL Institute of Neurology. Her doctoral research was focused on genetic modifiers of prion disease and mechanisms of disease susceptibility. Her research interests include neurogenomics, clinical genomics and precision medicine. She is based in the London office.
Senior Editors
Roshan Ahmed, PhD, Springer Nature, New York, USA
Roshan earned her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Chicago where she studied Biology and the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science and Medicine. She completed her doctoral research on pancreatic cancer metabolism and preclinical therapeutics at Columbia University and received her PhD in pharmacology and molecular signaling. Her research interests include cancer biology and the microbiome. She is based in the New York office.
Patrik Flammer, DPhil, MSc, Springer Nature, London, UK
Patrik holds an MSc in Molecular and Cell Biology, and completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford working on genetics and epidemiology of human intestinal parasites. His postdoctoral research extended this to include aspects of ancient DNA and epidemiology of infections in past populations. He is based in the London office.
Gabriele Alfarano, PhD, Springer Nature, Berlin, Germany
Gabriele graduated in Medical Biotechnologies and Nanobiotechnologies at the University of Salento (Lecce, Italy). He obtained a PhD in Molecular Oncology at the European School of Molecular Medicine in Milan, working on the regulation of pancreatic cancer differentiation. He extended this work in his postdoctoral research to focus on the transcriptional, epigenetic and metabolic heterogeneity of pancreatic cancer. He is based in the Berlin office.
Editorial Board Members
Fowzan Alkuraya, MD, King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center, Saudi Arabia
orcid.org/0000-0003-4158-341X
Research interests: Mendelian Disorders
Fowzan S Alkuraya is a Professor of Human Genetics at Alfaisal University and the Chairman of the Department of Translational Genomics at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center. He joined medical school (King Saud University) before turning 15 and graduated first in his class with first class honor. He did his pediatric residency at Georgetown University Hospital, followed by a fellowship in clinical genetics and another in molecular genetics at Harvard Medical School. He also did a postdoctoral research fellowship in the area of developmental genetics in the lab of Prof. Richard Maas at Harvard Medical School. He returned to his native Saudi Arabia to establish the Developmental Genetics Lab, which later evolved into the Center for Genomic Medicine at KFSHRC. He is an authority in the area of Mendelian genetics with more than 500 published manuscripts that describe his lab’s discovery of hundreds of novel disease genes in humans as well as many other seminal contributions to the field of human genetics as featured in profiles published by The Lancet and Science. He is a frequently invited speaker at local, regional and international conferences, on the editorial board of prominent human genetics journals, and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including William King Bowes Award in Medical Genetics (first non-US based winner), King Salman Award for Disability Research and Curt Stern Award for Excellence in Human Genetics Research (first non-US based winner).
Patrick Aloy, PhD, Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), Spain
orcid.org/0000-0002-3557-0236
Research interests: systems pharmacology, computer-aided drug design, network biology, network medicine, personalised medicine
Dr Patrick Aloy is an ICREA Research Professor and Principal Investigator of the Structural Bioinformatics and Network Biology (SB&NB) lab at the IRB. He obtained his BSc in Biochemistry, MSc in Biotechnology and PhD in Computational Biology by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. He spent one and a half years working at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (London, UK), and over five years as postdoctoral researcher and staff scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (Heidelberg, DE).
The main goal of his laboratory is to combine molecular, cell and computational biology to unveil the basic wiring architecture and dynamics of physio-pathological pathways to discover new therapeutic opportunities and increase our understanding of how biological systems change from the healthy state to disease. In the last years he has been developing resources to process, harmonize and integrate bioactivity data on small molecules, providing compound bioactivity descriptors that push the similarity principle beyond chemical properties, reaching various ambits of biology. Currently, the main research line in the lab is to collect genuinely heterogeneous datasets and develop novel methodologies to truly integrate different layers of regulation to unveil disease signatures. Moreover, they are convinced that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform drug discovery, as it is reshaping other areas of science and technology, and biological signatures are the key to guide the (semi) automated design of chemical compounds to globally revert disease states, beyond individual targets. Webpage.
Andrew Beggs, PhD, University of Birmingham, UK
orcid.org/0000-0003-0784-2967
Research interests: Cancer, Genomics, Nanopore sequencing, HLA
Andrew Beggs is a Professor of Cancer Genetics & Surgery at the University of Birmingham, U.K. He is broadly interested in all aspects of molecular genetics, but has a specific interest in somatic cancer genetics and new technologies. His laboratory has expertise in single cell and nanopore sequencing technologies to answer clinically relevant questions in cancer genetics. He is also clinically active, practicing as a consultant surgeon in the UK. Webpage.
Jian Carrot-Zhang, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-0103-9965
Research interests: Cancer genetics, genomics
Dr. Carrot-Zhang is interested in developing cutting-edge computational methods to characterize cancer risk and response to treatment mechanisms. We combine statistical modeling and large-scale, multiethnic clinical genomic cohorts to understand how cancer is impacted by genetic ancestry, with the goal of improving precision oncology for all. Webpage.
Charles Chiu, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, United States
Research interests: clinical metagenomics, virus discovery, phylogenetics, host response, machine learning, cell-free RNA, pathogen detection, microbiology, infectoius diseases, transcriptomics, phylogenetic analysis
Charles Chiu, M.D./Ph.D. is Professor of Laboratory Medicine at University of California, San Francisco and Director of the UCSF Clinical Microbiology Laboratory. Dr. Chiu leads a translational research laboratory focused on discovery and characterization of emerging viral pathogens and development of clinical metagenomic next-generation sequencing and host response profiling assays for diagnosis of infections. His work is currently supported by funding from the NIH, CDC, Chan-Zuckerberg Biohub, and Abbott Laboratories. Dr. Chiu has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed publications, is a co-founder of Delve Bio, and serves on the scientific advisory board of Biomeme, BiomeSense, Mammoth Biosciences, and FlightPath Biosciences. Webpage.
Nicholas Croucher, PhD, Imperial College London, UK
orcid.org/0000-0001-6303-8768
Research interests: Bacterial evolution, bacterial epidemiology, horizontal gene transfer, antimicrobial resistance, vaccines
I am a Reader in Bacterial Genomics at the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London. My primary interest is the study of bacterial evolution and epidemiology using a combination of mathematical modelling, molecular biology and bioinformatic analyses. Recent work has involved the development of algorithms for analysis of large genomic datasets, with applications to understanding horizontal gene transfer, the distribution of antimicrobial resistance phenotypes, and the impact of vaccination campaigns. Webpage.
Aaron Diaz, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, USA
orcid.org/0000-0001-9059-9501
Research interests: brain tumors, glioma, medulloblastoma, immunotherapy, genomics, single-cell
Dr. Diaz is interested in developing targeted therapeutics for the treatment of primary brain tumors. His laboratory applies molecular and computational approaches to identify therapeutic targets and pathways involved in cancer progression. Dr. Diaz was trained in both computational and molecular biology. As a postdoc at UCSF, he discovered mechanisms of stem-cell self-renewal via genome-wide loss-of-function screening and systems approaches. In 2015 he started a lab in the Brain Tumor Center of UCSF. The core competencies of the Diaz lab include systems biology, bioinformatics, and single-cell genomics of human clinical specimens. Dr. Diaz is a PI on several multi-year grants from private foundations, the Department of Defense, and the National Institutes of Health and a member of the editorial boards of Neuro-Oncology and Genome Medicine. The Diaz lab has published studies on brain-tumor heterogeneity and immuno-oncology (e.g. Cancer Discovery 2019, Genome Biology 2020, Nature Cancer 2022). This work has been acknowledged with the Adult Basic Research Award from the Society of Neuro-Oncology twice. Webpage.
Charis Eng, MD, PhD, Cleveland Clinic, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-3693-5145
Research interests: Inherited cancers, germline genomics, cancer genetics, PTEN-related disease genetics, cancer microbiome
Prof. Charis Eng is the inaugural Chair of the Cleveland Clinic’s Genomic Medicine Institute and inaugural Director, Center for Personalized Genetic Healthcare, an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor and the Sondra J. and Stephen R. Hardis Endowed Chair of Cancer Genomic Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. She is Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. In her leadership roles, she continues to implement evidence-based genetic- and genomics-enabled precision healthcare, improving care for patients at genetic risk of disease nationally and globally. Her expertise lies in the genomics of heritable cancers, chief of which are those of the breasts and thyroid, and studies the microbiome as a transducer of the environment to the genome. With >500 peer-reviewed articles, she is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and was conferred the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor, among numerous awards. Prof Eng has served as advisory to DHHS Secretary’s Committee on Genetics, Health & Society and is Editor-in-Chief of Human Molecular Genetics, a Senior Editor of Cancer Research and an Associate Editor of npj Genomic Medicine. Webpage.
Elana Fertig, PhD, University of Maryland, Baltimore, USA
Research interests: computational biology, oncology, systems biology, single-cell, multi-omics
Dr. Fertig advances a new predictive medicine paradigm for oncology by converging systems biology with translational technology development. Her computational cancer biology research is inspired by her background as a NASA fellow in weather prediction. She aims to invent computational techniques that use multi-platform high-throughput precancer and tumor datasets to forecast the cellular and molecular pathways of future cancer progression and therapeutic resistance. An authority in computational oncology, Dr. Fertig has been a leader in establishing spatial multi-omics technologies, matrix factorization, and transfer learning as current mainstays in bioinformatics. Her combined expertise in computational oncology, chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, and tumor immunotherapy ensure translational relevance and mechanistic validation of computational findings. Beyond algorithm development, Dr. Fertig’s transdisciplinary expertise enables her to lead large-scale, team-science projects adapting cutting-edge molecular profiling technologies to human clinical trials to uncover new therapeutic interception pathways. Her transdisciplinary research has made her a sought after mentor and recognized leader of new training paradigms that converge oncologists, pathologists, basic biologists, computational investigators, and engineers to advance the next generation of computationally-driven oncology care. She is Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore as of December 2024 and was elected to the College of Fellows American Institute for Medical and Biomedical Engineering (AIMBE) in 2022. Webpage.
Michael Fraser, PhD, Movember, Canada
Research interests: genomics, bioinformatics, computational biology, prostate cancer, cancer, biomarkers
Dr. Michael Fraser obtained his Ph.D. degree in Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Ottawa and completed post-doctoral studies in the Radiation Medicine Program at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto.
Dr. Fraser previously served as the Scientific Director of the Canadian Prostate Cancer Genome Network (CPC-GENE) program, one of the largest prostate cancer whole genome sequencing programs in the world. He also served as Director of the Prostate Cancer Program at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and was a founding member of the International Cancer Genome Consortium Pan-Prostate Cancer Group (PPCG): a multi-national effort to characterize the genome and epigenome of prostate cancer and to develop molecular biomarkers of aggressive disease. Dr. Fraser was Staff Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and an Assistant Professor in the Division of Urology, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. He has published over 70 research papers, review articles, editorials, and textbook chapters in the areas of prostate cancer genomics and bioinformatics. In 2018, he was named a NextGen Star of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), and he is the recipient of numerous local, national, and international awards for research and teaching.
He currently serves as Director, Cancer Program Implementation at Movember Canada.
Eric R. Gamazon, PhD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, USA
orcid.org/0000-0003-4204-8734
Research interests: Genomics, statistical genetics, machine learning, functional genomics, multi-omics, gene regulation, single-cell omics, iPSCs, causal inference
Dr. Eric Gamazon is interested in what can be learned from DNA sequence and multi-omics data about disease mechanisms, therapeutic intervention, molecular evolution, and genome function. His laboratory at Vanderbilt University Medical Center is an interdisciplinary group with expertise in computational genomics and molecular biology. He utilizes large-scale DNA biobank data linked to electronic health records, along with machine learning and single-cell omics, to identify genes involved in human health and disease in diverse populations, to discover novel biomarkers, and to enable a comprehensive systems view of the disease phenome. He co-chaired the GWAS Working Group of the GTEx Consortium and has served on various National Institutes of Health (NIH) study sections. He was a recipient of the inaugural Genomic Innovator Award from the NIH. He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. Webpage.
Greg Gibson, PhD, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-5352-5877
Research interests: transcriptomics, integrative genomics, evolutionary genetics, genetic policy
Greg Gibson has twin interests in genotype-by-environment interactions and integrative genomics for personalized medicine. His major focus is applications of transcriptomics to elucidate the mechanisms by which genetic variation mediates complex phenotypes and pathology. In parallel, since his days as a fly geneticist, he has been studying how canalization influences the evolution of traits. Recent work in single cell and bulk tissue transcriptomics has explored the use of transcriptional risk scores in inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmunity. Greg has authored two text-books of genomics and human genetics, and maintains the GenomesTake monthly genetics blog. Webpage.
Leng Han, PhD, Texas A&M University, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-7380-2640
Research interests: Cancer Genomics, Cancer Immunotherapy, Noncoding RNAs, Computational Biology
Dr. Leng Han is an Associate Professor at Institute of Biosciences and Technology, Texas A&M University. Our lab utilizes cutting-edge techniques in systems biology to understand the molecular mechanisms of complex diseases. We have comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms of novel transcriptomic elements in cancer (Trends in Cancer, 2018), including pseudogenes (Nature Communications, 2014), lncRNA (Cancer Research, 2015), RNA editing (Cancer Cell, 2015), eQTL (Nucleic Acids Research, 2018), snoRNA (Cell Reports, 2017), APA (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2018), circRNA (Genome Medicine, 2019) and eRNA (Nature Communications, 2019). We pioneered a series of pan-cancer analyses to provide clinical insights into cancer therapy, including chronotherapy (Cell Systems, 2018), hypoxia-targeted therapy (Nature Metabolism, 2019), and immunotherapy (Nature Immunology, 2019; Nature Communications, 2020a; Nature Communications, 2020b; JNCI, 2021, Cancer Cell, 2021). We have been invited to contribute review, commentary and spotlight by multiple journals, including Nature Biotechnology, Nature Metabolism, Trends in Genetics, Trends in Cancer, Trends in Molecular Medicine, Genome Medicine, and Oncogene. Webpage.
Oscar Harari, PhD, The Ohio State University, United States
Research interests: Alzheimer's Disease, Neurodegeneration, Stroke, Frontotemporal dementia, Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, Deep learning, Genetics, Genomics, Single-cell omics, Spatial Transcriptomics, Biomarkers, Multi-omics, Cross-omics, System Biology, Cell resilience and Vulnerabilities, Senescence
Oscar Harari, PhD, is the inaugural Director of the Neurogenetics Division and the Neurobiology of Aging & Resilience Center at The Ohio State University, OH, USA. He leads a multidisciplinary team focused on enhancing the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the etiology and progression of neurodegenerative diseases, with a particular emphasis on Alzheimer's Disease. His research program bridges the areas of bioinformatics, molecular biology, human genetics and genomics. His group employs machine learning and data science techniques to interrogate brain high-throughput omics data from tissue homogenates, identifying molecular profiles associated with the etiology and progression of Alzheimer's Disease, which provides insights into the pathways and molecular changes impacting clinical presentation. Furthermore, they utilize novel cross-omics analytical frameworks to capture the molecular heterogeneity among Alzheimer's Disease brains, which would otherwise be missed by non-clustered and single-modality omics approaches. This provides new perspectives on the molecular pathways associated with Alzheimer's Disease cognitive outcomes, that are reflected in the peripheral tissue, and potentially enable the molecular subtyping and staging of the disease. In recent years, the group has been heavily invested in leveraging single-cell and spatially resolved transcriptomics from postmortem human brains and experimental models to study cell-type-specific molecular changes in the context of Alzheimer's Disease neuropathological lesions. Webpage.
Vanessa Hayes, PhD, The University of Sydney, Australia
orcid.org/0000-0002-4524-7280
Research interests: prostate cancer genomics, ancestry and health, health disparities, whole cancer genomes, cancer drivers, mutational signatures, structural variants, African inclusion in genomic medicine, pathogenic mutations, optical genome mapping
As Professor of the Ancestry & Health Genomics Laboratory (Hayes Lab) located in the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney and Petre Chair of Prostate Cancer Research, the labs focus is on investigating the complexities of the human and cancer genome and how genomic variation has shaped human evolution and health. Our over-riding goal, to unlock the ancestral and mutagenic factors driving geo-ethnic prostate cancer health disparity to deliver precision medicine to diagnose, treat and prevent specifically lethal disease. Our program of research is underpinned by expertise in genomic and data science, with a steadfast commitment to securing individualized cancer care options for patients worldwide. Our vision is to use patient-driven research that links genomic science with clinical science, specifically population science (or ancestry genomics), with a focus on under-served or minority populations. This multilayered approach is vital for investigating the entire spectrum of factors that can impact cancer progression and patient health outcomes. Webpage.
Matthias Heinig, Dr. rer. nat., Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany
Research interests: computational biology, genetics of gene expression, complex trait genetics, cardiovascular diseases, multi-omics, single cell genomics
Matthias Heinig is independent group leader at the Institute of Computational Biology at Helmholtz Munich. He studied Bioinformatics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Technical University Munich and Freie Universität Berlin. He obtained his PhD at the Max-Delbrück-Center and worked as a Postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for molecular genetics in Berlin.
Together with his research group, he develops AI solutions for personalized network based precision medicine. His aim is to identify molecular regulatory networks underlying common diseases and the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms controlling these networks from population level DNA, multi-omics and single cell data sets. A special focus is the molecular characterization of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. Webpage.
Winston Hide, PhD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Harvard Medical School, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-8621-3271
Research interests: bioinformatics, systems biology, neurodegeneration, transcriptomics, spatial transcriptomics, drug repurposing
Winston Hide, Ph.D., is the Director of the Precision RNA Medicine Core at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. He is an associate professor in the Department of Pathology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Hide applies systematic organizing approaches to genomic data to reveal critical disease events occurring in cancers and neurodegeneration. He builds and implements systems that result in discovery and prioritization of key genes, pathways, processes and prediction of drugs that can targets these in complex diseases. Dr. Hide has worked with key industry partners, including Biogen, to develop translational pipelines for target prioritization.
Dr. Hide was elected into the Academy of Science of South Africa in 2007. He was also the first recipient of the “International Society for Computational Biology Award for Outstanding Achievement,” given in recognition of his work for the development of computational biology and bioinformatics in Africa. Webpage.
Francesco Iorio, PhD, Human Technopole, Italy
orcid.org/0000-0001-7063-8913
Research interests: computational biology, cancer dependencies, pharmacogenomics, CRISPR, drug repositioning, new algorithms, bioinformatics tools, pathway inference, causal reasoning, network theory, machine learning
Francesco is a computer scientist by training. He completed his PhD studies at the University of Salerno and the TeleThon Institute of Genetics and Medicine (TIGEM, Naples - Italy), where he focused on computational drug discovery and repositioning methods. Subsequently, he has been awarded a joint EMBL – European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) and Wellcome Sanger Institute (WSI) post-doctoral (ESPOD) fellowship to work on integrative computational frameworks for predicting and dissecting drug sensitivity in cancer, analysing data from large-scale in vitro drug screens. Following this, as a senior bioinformatician at EBI, Francesco has led the analysis of data from large-scale genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 pooled screens across hundreds of cancer cell lines, aiming to identify synthetic lethalities in cancer and new therapeutic targets. From 2018 to 2020 he has been leading the WSI's Cancer Dependency Map Analytics team, providing computational support to the Cancer Dependency Map partnership: an international endeavour involving the WSI and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard to identify all the genetic dependencies and vulnerabilities existing in cancer cells. Since late 2020 Francesco is a Research Group Leader in Computational Biology at the Human Technopole (Milan, Italy) where he is establishing a research program in Computational cancer Pharmacogenomics and Therapeutic Target Discovery. Webpage.
Luciane Kagohara, PhD, Johns Hopkins University, United States
Research interests: Cancer, Spatial transcriptomics, Gene expression, Systems biology, Cancer immunology, Therapeutic resistance
Luciane Kagohara, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Oncology at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins (SKCCC). Dr. Kagohara is a molecular and computational biologist hybrid, developing the expertise to perform combined experimental and computational research on gene expression regulation during cancer progression and resistance to therapies. Dr. Kagohara’s research program at Johns Hopkins SKCCC within the Quantitative Sciences Division and the Gastrointestinal Cancer Division focus on understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms of therapeutic resistance and tumor evolution through the use of state-of-the-art approaches, like single-cell and spatial transcriptomics, to fully uncover the crucial molecular and cellular interactions driving tumor evolution and responses to therapies. Her lab also focuses on studying the epigenetic alterations that happen during tumorigenesis and how epigenetic modulators impact tumor growth and tumor immune responses.
Razelle Kurzrock, MD, F.A.C.P., United States
Research Interests: Clinical Trials, Precision Oncology
Razelle Kurzrock, MD is a world-renowned physician-scientist leader in precision medicine as well as in the development of novel therapeutics in the field of oncology. She is recognized for founding, developing and chairing one of the largest Phase 1 clinical trial departments globally while at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center; the central theme of the department was a personalized medicine strategy. She is also one of the pioneering trialists of the WINTHER precision medicine international trial focusing, for the first time, on transcriptomics in addition to genomics. This trial was the signature study of the Worldwide Innovative Network (WIN) consortium (Nature Medicine).
Jean-Charles Lambert, PhD, Inserm, France
orcid.org/0000-0003-0829-7817
Research Interests: alzheimer, neurodegenerative diseases, GWAS, sequencing, omics, polygenic risk, post-genomics, IPSCs, genomics of neurodegenerative diseases and post-genomic era
Jean-Charles is a research director at Inserm and heads the "Search for molecular determinants of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders" team. The projects developed his team is based on integrated approaches, including the development of epidemiological approaches, high-throughput genomic methods (genotyping, sequencing and transcriptomics) and an essential bioinformatics backbone. He coordinates the European Alzheimer&Dementia Biobank (EADB), the world's largest effort in genome-wide association studies, and is co-PI of the International Genomics for Alzheimer's Project (IGAP) and the Alzheimer disease exome sequencing (ADES) consortium. His project also includes the development of relevant in vitro and in vivo experimental models from the most interesting genetic determinants that have been characterised. Webpage.
Yuan Luo, PhD, Northwestern University, United States
Research Interests: alzheimer, neurodegenerative diseases, GWAS, sequencing, omics, polygenic risk, post-genomics, IPSCs, genomics of neurodegenerative diseases and post-genomic era
Dr. Luo is Chief AI Officer at Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) and Institute for AI in Medicine, and a tenured Full Professor at Feinberg School of Medicine in Northwestern University. Globally recognized for his leadership and significant contributions to biomedical AI, Dr. Luo has been elected as Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics (ACMI) and Fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA). A visionary leader in the field, Dr. Luo is at the forefront of building next-generation biomedical informatics and collaborative AI for healthcare. His exemplary leadership shapes strategies across various levels, ranging from university settings to entire health systems to national research consortia. With a commitment to democratizing AI literacy, Dr. Luo has been featured in eminent venues such as The Economist, Becker's Healthcare and Reuters to share unique visions on delivering data and AI strategies that power Research & Development and drive business value.
As a pioneer in the development of multi-modal AI and data science frameworks, Dr. Luo's work focuses on understanding complex diseases and informing targeted therapies. With a publication record of over 200 peer-reviewed papers, Dr. Luo's work has been cited by scientists across more than 30 different countries and 25 research areas. Dr. Luo's innovative approach has led to the development of a seminal suite of AI methods including generative AI and large language models (LLMs). These methods leverage multi-modal data, including multi-omics (e.g., single cell and spatial), medical imaging, structured clinical data, and unstructured biomedical narratives to better understand complex disease and inform targeted therapeutics. Webpage.
Christopher Maher, PhD, Washington University, United States
Research Interests: Bioinformatics, Cancer, Transcriptomics, Epigenetics, Genetics, Genomics, Single-cell omics, Spatial Transcriptomics, Biomarkers, Multi-omics, Noncoding RNAs
Christopher Maher, PhD, is the Co-Director of Molecular Oncology within the Division of Oncology at the Washington University School of Medicine. He is a professor within the Departments of Internal Medicine and Biomedical Engineering and a Co-Leader of the Solid Tumor Therapeutics Program at the Alvin J. Siteman Comprehensive Cancer Center. He leads a multidisciplinary team focused on enhancing the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the solid tumor progression and translating genome-based discoveries into the clinic. His lab has developed of open-source bioinformatics tools focused on clonal evolution (ClonEvol), noncoding RNA discovery (DANSR), and gene fusion discovery (INTEGRATE, INTEGRATE-Neo, INTEGRATE-Vis). His lab has extensive experience integrative cancer ‘omics’ analyses to reveal biologically and clinically relevant biomarkers. This can be exemplified by the discovery of clinically actionable recurrent gene fusions in across solid tumors. His lab also has a strong interest in translational noncoding RNA biology as demonstrated by their discoveries of novel lncRNAs altered in solid tumors, of which a subset are functionally relevant, detectable by non-invasive assays, and are associated with patient outcome. Webpage.
Matthias Merker, PhD, Research Center Borstel - Leibniz Lung Center, Germany
Research Interest: next generation sequencing, Population Genomics, whole genome sequencing, bacterial evolution, Bacterial Metagenomes, AMR Infections
Matthias is a molecular biologist interested in the evolution of antimicrobial resistant (AMR) lung pathogens. During his PhD and postdoctoral research, he studied the genomes and population dynamics of multidrug resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. Currently, he is an Associate Professor and head of the “Evolution of the Resistome” research group at the Research Center Borstel (Germany). Together with his team, he is now investigating the collateral effects of AMR traits, including pathogen interactions with other microbes and evolutionary trade-offs that lead to unpredictable phenotypes. The group seeks to integrate this knowledge into innovative treatment strategies that reduce pathogen adaptation and improve our understanding of microbial interactions in chronic lung diseases. Webpage
Clint Miller, PhD, University of Virginia, United States
Research interests: Multi-ancestry GWAS, systems genetics, single cell/spatial omics, cardiometabolic diseases, gene regulation
Dr. Clint L. Miller is an Associate Professor of Genome Sciences and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Virginia. He received his PhD in Pharmacology at the University of Rochester and completed postdoctoral training in Human Genetics at Stanford University. His lab harnesses systems genetics approaches to discover gene regulatory mechanisms and risk factors for complex cardiovascular diseases. This work involves integrating genetic epidemiology data from diverse populations, single-cell multi-omics profiling, functional characterization, and computational analyses. His team has established several human tissue/cellular reference datasets and user-friendly analysis pipelines to study atherosclerotic coronary artery disease. He is a member of large-scale genetic and genomic consortia, such as TOPMed, CHARGE, MESA, and international networks funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Institute and the Leducq Foundation. He serves as an Editorial Board Member of Genome Biology, Genes, and Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. Webpage.
Noel de Miranda, PhD, Leiden University Medical Center, Netherlands
orcid.ord/0000-0001-6122-1024
Research interests: Cancer immunology and immunotherapy, neoantigens, transcriptomic profiles with clinical relevance in connection to immune responses, genomic instability, hereditary cancer, spatial technologies (transcriptomic and proteomic)
Noel de Miranda is the Principal Investigator of the Cancer Immunogenomics group and Associate Professor at the department of Pathology of the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. Dr. de Miranda’s group combines the use of high-end genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic (single cell and spatial) technologies for the study of cancer genetics and immunology. The main aim of the group is to support the development of novel therapies to enrich the immunotherapy toolbox for the treatment of advanced cancers. The group’s activities are subdivided into two major pillars: 1) the discovery of immunotherapeutic targets in cancer patients that are not amenable to state-of-the-art immunotherapies and 2) the identification of (innate) immune cell subsets with immunotherapeutic
potential. Webpage.
Charles Mullighan, MSc, MBBS(Hons), MD, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, United States
Research interests: Acute Leukemia biology, Genomics, Leukemia modeling, Preclinical drug development
Charles Mullighan is a member (Professor) in the Department of Pathology, Co-leader of the Hematologic Malignancies Program, and Deputy Director of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. He studied medicine at University of Adelaide, undertook doctoral studies in immunogenetics in Oxford, England and trained in haematology and haematopathology at the Institute of Medical and Veterinary Science and Royal Adelaide Hospital. He joined St Jude as a postdoctoral fellow in 2004, and joined faculty in 2008. The goal of Dr. Mullighan’s research is to improve outcomes for acute leukemia by using integrated genomic analysis, experimental modelling and drug development. His work has defined the genetic basis of multiple new subtypes of leukemia, and these advances have entered the clinic as new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. He is the recipient of awards including an National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award, the Meyenburg Prize for Cancer Research and the American Society of Hematology Dameshek Prize. Webpage.
Peter Robinson, MD, The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-0736-9199
Research interests: Computational biology, bioinformatics, machine learning, rare diseases
Peter is Professor of Computational Biology at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, Farmington, CT. Previously, Peter was Professor for Medical Genomics at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin and was adjunct professor for Bioinformatics in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the Free University of Berlin. Peter’s research group initially characterized Mendelian disease-associated genes including CA8 and PIGV and characterized a novel mode of pathogenesis in a mouse model of Marfan syndrome. The central research theme since 2004 has been the development of computational resources and algorithms for the study of human disease; We have developed the Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO), which provides comprehensive bioinformatic resources for the analysis of human diseases and phenotypes, offering a computational bridge between genome biology and clinical medicine. Peter’s group has developed algorithms for genomics research involving ChIP-seq, NGS-based T-Cell Receptor profiling, and RNA-seq, as well as translational research and diagnostics by whole-exome and whole-genome sequencing. Webpage.
Panos Roussos, MD, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
orcid.org/0000-0002-4640-6239
Research interests: omics, mental illness, neurodegeneration, single cell
Panos Roussos is the Endowed Professor of Translational Psychiatry, a Professor of Psychiatry and Genetics and Genomics Sciences, and the Director of the Center for Disease Neurogenomics at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and the Director of the Center for Precision Medicine and Translational Therapeutics at James J. Peters VA Medical Center. Dr. Roussos is leading efforts aimed at the multi-scale profiling and integrative analysis of neurodegenerative diseases and serious mental illnesses in several consortia. Webpage.
Matthias Schwab, Dr. med., Dr. Margarete Fischer-Bosch-Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, Stuttgart, and Department of Clinical Pharmacology, University Hospital Tuebingen, Germany
orcid.org/0000-0002-9984-075X
Research interests: My scientific interests focus on precision medicine particularly pharmacogenomics & cancer, and the contribution of ADME genes to drug response and side-effect. Moreover, I am interested in the consideration of novel –omics technologies (e.g. genomics, epigenomics, metabolomics), and the implementation of research findings into clinical practice.
Matthias Schwab studied medicine followed by fellowships in Children's Medicine and Clinical Phar-macology with board certifications for both disciplines. Since 2007 he is Director of the Dept. of Clinical Pharmacology, University Hospital Tuebingen, and the Dr. Margarete Fischer-Bosch-Institute of Clinical Pharmacology, Stuttgart, Germany. He participated in and/or coordinated a number of national/international research networks (e.g., EU-ITN, EU-IMIs, EU-Horizon2020, BMBF). Moreover, he is member of several committees (e.g. German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, German Academy of Science and Literature, Mainz), and received numerous awards (e.g. Galenus von Pergamon Award, the Robert-Pfleger Research Award). His scientific accomplishments result in > 350 peer reviewed publications, and he is repeatedly listed as Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher (last 2021). Webpage.
Peter Sims, PhD, Columbia University, USA
orcid.org/0000-0002-3921-4837
Research interests: single cell genomics, cancer, immunology, brain tumors, neuroscience, computational biology
Dr. Sims received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Harvard University. He joined Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Systems Biology in 2012. In 2020, he was promoted to Associate Professor with appointments in the Department of Systems Biology and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. He also serves as the Faculty Director of the Columbia Single Cell Analysis Core. His laboratory focuses on the development of genomic technology for the application of systems biology in cancer, immunology, and neuroscience. This includes both experimental and computational methods for single-cell genomics and cell type-specific analysis of transcription and translation in complex tissues such as the brain. He applies these tools in several human disease contexts including brain tumors and other neurological disorders as well as basic neuroscience and immunology. Webpage.
Vitali G Sintchenko, PhD, The University of Sydney, Australia
Research Interests: genomic surveillance, food-borne bacterial diseases, respiratory infections, tuberculosis, pertussis, diphtheria, salmonellosis
Vitali Sintchenko, MD/PhD is Professor of Microbiology at the University of Sydney and leads the Pathogen Emergence and Spread Research Theme at the Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute (SydneyID). His primary research interests are in genomics, advanced diagnostics and epidemiology bacterial pathogens with epidemic potential and the integration of genomics into new models of precision medicine and public health. As a clinical pathologist , Dr Sintchenko supervises public health microbial genomics service based at the Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research – New South Wales Health Pathology, Westmead Hospital. Webpage
Albrecht Stenzinger, MD, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany
Research Interests: NGS, WES, WGS, Transcriptomics, Predictive Biomarkers, Immunooncology
Albrecht Stenzinger is Professor of Molecular Tumor Pathology, Vice Chair of the Institute of Pathology (IPH), as well as the Director of the IPH Center for Molecular Pathology (CMP) and Section Head for Molecular Diagnostics and Biomarker Development at the Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Heidelberg, Germany. Dr. Stenzinger is holding an MD degree from the University of Giessen, completed his residency and fellowship training in pathology at the Charité University Hospital, Berlin and the University Hospital Heidelberg. He is a boardcertified surgical pathologist, molecular pathologist, and senior attending. Dr. Stenzinger received postdoctoral training at the University of Heidelberg and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, USA. He has broad expertise in molecular pathology as well as molecular diagnostics and works in the field of translational research and genetics of solid tumors. Webpage.
Umang Swami, MS, MD, Huntsman Cancer Institute, United States
Research interests: Clinical trials, Translational studies, Genomic correlations
Umang Swami, MD, MS, is an Assistant Professor of Oncology at Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, specializing in genitourinary cancers. After graduating from Sawai Man Singh Medical College, India, he worked at Montefiore-Einstein Cancer Center on phase I studies for advanced solid tumors. He completed an Internal Medicine residency at St. Barnabas Hospital, NY, a Hematology-Oncology fellowship, and an MS in Clinical Investigations at the University of Iowa. With over 130 publications, Dr. Swami has presented internationally and serves on ASCO guideline panels and multiple institutional committees while mentoring students and trainees in oncology research. Webpage.
Fuchou Tang, PhD, Peking University, China
Research Interests: Tumorigenesis, Single cell sequencing, Epigenetics, DNA methylation, Single molecule sequencing, Organoid
Fuchou Tang is a full professor at BIOPIC, School of Life Sciences, Peking University. His lab focuses on the epigenetic regulation of gene expression network during human early embryonic development, germline development and tumorigenesis. His lab pioneered the single cell sequencing field and has systematically developed a serial of single cell functional genomic sequencing technologies (scRRBS, 2013; scTrio-seq, 2016; scCOOL-seq, 2017; SCAN-seq, 2020; SMOOTH-seq, 2021; scNanoATAC-seq, 2023; scNanoHi-C, 2023; NanoStrand-seq, 2024; scNanoCOOL-seq, 2023). His work has been cited for more than 30,000 times. He has been invited to give presentations at AGBT, ISSCR, ICHG, Gordon Conference, HCA. He is editorial board members of Cell Stem Cell, Cell Research, Protein & Cell, Genome Medicine, Genome Biology, Medical Review, Genomics Proteomics & Bioinformatics, Precision Clinical Medicine, Chinese Journal of Cancer Research, Open Biology. Webpage
Andrew Teschendorff, PhD, Shanghai Institute for Nutrition and Health, China
Research interests: Cancer Risk, Aging, Epigenomics, Single-Cell Omics, Cancer Systems Biology, Biological networks, Machine Learning, Epigenomics of Aging and Cancer, Epigenetic clocks, Network Biology, Network Physics
Andrew Teschendorff is a Professor of Computational Systems Epigenomics working at the CAS Key Lab of Computational Biology in Shanghai, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He trained as a theoretical physicist, first under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs at Edinburgh University, subsequently obtaining in 2000 his PhD from Cambridge University. He performed postdoctoral work in Mathematical Biology (University of Warwick 2001-2003), Statistical Cancer Genomics (University of Cambridge 2003-2008) and Epigenomics (University College London 2008-2013). He has held numerous research awards including a Cambridge-MIT Fellowship, the Heller Research Fellowship and an Advanced International Newton Fellowship from the Royal Society. In 2023 he received a Highly Cited Researcher award from Clarivate in recognition of how his work has influenced the epigenomics, aging and cancer systems biology fields.
His lab’s currrent research focus is two-fold : (i) elucidating the role of epigenomics, notably DNA methylation (DNAm), in aging and cancer-risk, and (ii) using DNA methylation and single-omic data to develop novel strategies for cancer risk prediction. To address these goals, his lab has recently developed (i) computational methods to dissect cell-type heterogeneity and perform cell-type deconvolution of large bulk-tissue DNAm datasets, (ii) epigenetic mitotic clocks to track clonal expansions in normal cell populations at cancer risk, and (iii) computational systems biological methods to quantify stemness and cellular plasticity from scRNA-Seq/snRNA-Seq data measured in preneoplastic cell populations. Webpage.
Nicola Waddell, PhD, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia
orcid.org/0000-0002-3950-2476
Research interests: Cancer Genomics, genome sequencing, cancer biomarkers, somatic mutation, variant curation
Dr. Nicola Waddell is head of the Medical Genomics Team at QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Australia. She completed her PhD in 2003 at the University of Leicester. Between 2009-2015 she was part of the International Cancer Genome Consortia (ICGC). Her research group is comprised of collaborative bioinformaticians who analyze multi-omic data to gain insights into cancer development and the tumor microenvironment. She has an interest in profiling cancers to identify prognostic and treatment markers. Webpage.
Editorial Advisors
Russ Altman, MD, PhD, Stanford University, USA
Charles Auffray, Dr. Sci. (Biol.), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France
Alberto Bardelli, PhD, University of Torino and Candiolo Cancer Institute, Italy
Stephan Beck, PhD, University College London, UK
Mikael Benson, MD, PhD, Linköping University Hospital, Sweden
Carl Borrebaeck, Dr. Sci. (Biol.), Lund University, Sweden
Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale, University of Oslo, Norway
George Calin, MD, PhD, MD Anderson Cancer Center, USA
Timothy Caulfield, University of Alberta, Canada
Richard Christopherson, PhD, University of Sydney, Australia
Angus Clarke, Cardiff University, UK
Ann Daly, Newcastle University, UK
Paul Edwards, PhD, Cambridge University, UK
Gary Gibbons, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, USA
Julian Griffin, University of Cambridge, UK
Sean Grimmond, University of Melbourne, Australia
David Gurwitz, PhD, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Martin Hibberd, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK
Robert Holt, PhD, British Columbia Cancer Agency, Canada
Leroy Hood, PhD, MD, Institute for Systems Biology, USA
Curtis Huttenhower, Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health, USA
Jane Kaye, PhD, University of Oxford, UK
Muin Khoury, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, USA
Bartha Maria Knoppers, PhD, AD.E., O.C., O.Q., FRSC., FCAHS, McGill University, Canada
Isaac Kohane, Harvard Medical School, USA
Nuria Lopez-Bigas, University Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Jeantine Lunshof, VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands
James Lupski, MD, PhD, DSc (hon), Baylor College of Medicine, USA
Amy McGuire, JD, PhD, Baylor College of Medicine, USA
Aleksandar Milosavljevic, Baylor College of Medicine, USA
Valerie Mizrahi, PhD, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Yves Moreau, University of Leuven, Belgium
Jeremy Nicholson, Imperial College London, UK
Michael Owen, MBChB, PhD, FRCPsych, Cardiff University, UK
Munir Pirmohamed, MBChB, PhD, University of Liverpool, UK
Heidi Rehm, PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital and Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University, USA
Alexandre Reymond, PhD, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
Charles Rotimi, National Institutes of Health, UK
Steven Rozen, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore
Stephen Scherer, PhD, The Hospital for Sick Children, Canada
Nicholas Schork, Craig Venter Research Institute, UK
Jay Shendure, University of Washington, USA
Richard Smith, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
Michael Snyder, Stanford University, USA
Toshikazu Ushijima, MD, National Cancer Center Research Institute, Japan
Joris Veltman, PhD, University of Newcastle, UK
Marc Vidal, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, USA
Peter Visscher, PhD, University of Queensland, Australia
Scott Weiss, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA
Zemin Zhang, Peking University, China
