Mark B. Gerstein

Mark Bender Gerstein is an American scientist working in bioinformatics and data science. He is the Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics, professor of molecular biophysics & biochemistry, professor of statistics & data science, and professor of computer science at Yale University.^[9] He is also co-director of the Yale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program. In 2018, Gerstein was named co-director of the Yale Center for Biomedical Data Science.^[10]

Mark Gerstein
Born	Mark Bender Gerstein February 23
Citizenship	US
Alma mater	Harvard University (AB) University of Cambridge (PhD)
Awards	AAAS Fellow[1] W. M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar Herchel Smith Scholarship ISCB Fellow[2] and Senior Scientist Award[3]
Scientific career
Fields	Bioinformatics[4]
Institutions	Harvard University University of Cambridge MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Stanford University Yale University
Thesis	Protein recognition: surfaces and conformational change (1993)
Doctoral advisor	Cyrus Chothia[5] Ruth Lynden-Bell[6]
Other academic advisors	Michael Levitt (postdoc)
Doctoral students	Werner Krebs[7][8]
Other notable students	Jan O. Korbel
Website	www.gersteinlab.org

Education

After graduating from Harvard College summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in physics in 1989, Gerstein did a PhD co-supervised by Ruth Lynden-Bell^[6] at the University of Cambridge and Cyrus Chothia at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology on liquid simulation and macromolecular conformational change in proteins, graduating in 1993.^[11] He then went on to postdoctoral research in bioinformatics at Stanford University from 1993 to 1996 supervised by Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt.

Research

Gerstein does research in the field of bioinformatics.^[4][12][13] This involves applying a range of computational approaches to problems in molecular biology, including data mining and machine learning, molecular simulation, and database design. His research group has a number of foci including annotating the human genome,^[14] personal genomics, cancer genomics, building AL/ML tools, analyzing molecular networks, simulating macromolecular motions, and processing biosensor and imaging data. Notable databases and tools that the group has developed include the Database of Macromolecular Motions,^[7][8] which categorizes macromolecular conformational change; tYNA,^[15] which helps analyze molecular networks; PubNet,^[16] which analyzes publication networks; PeakSeq,^[17] which identifies regions in the genome bound by particular transcription factors; and CNVnator,^[18] which categorizes block variants in the genome. Gerstein has also written extensively on how general issues in data science impact on genomics—in particular, in relation to privacy^[19] and to structuring scientific communication.^[20]

Gerstein's work has been published in peer reviewed scientific journals^[21][22][23] and non-scientific publications in more popular forums.^[24] His work has been highly cited, with an H greater than 200.^[4] He serves on a number of editorial and advisory boards, including those of PLoS Computational Biology, Genome Research, Genome Biology, and Molecular Systems Biology. He has been quoted in the New York Times,^[25][26][27] including on the front page,^[14] and in other major newspapers.^[28]

Awards and honors

In addition to a W. M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholars award,^[29] Gerstein has received awards from the US Navy, IBM, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Donaghue Foundation.^[30] He is a Fellow of the AAAS.^[1] Other awards include a Herchel-Smith Scholarship supporting his doctoral work at Emmanuel College, Cambridge and a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. He is a contributor to a number of scientific consortia including ENCODE,^[31] modENCODE,^[32][33][34] 1000 Genomes Project, Brainspan,^[35] and DOE Kbase.^{[citation needed]} He was made a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) in 2015 ^[2] and also received an Accomplishments by a Senior Scientist Award from the ISCB in 2023.^[3]