| Gerstein, Mark Bender | |
|---|---|
| Residence | US, UK |
| Nationality | US |
| Fields | Bioinformatics |
| Institutions | Yale, Stanford |
| Alma mater | Harvard, Cambridge |
| Doctoral advisor | Cyrus Chothia,[1] Ruth Lynden-Bell |
| Notable awards | W. M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholar, Herschel-Smith Scholarship |
Professor Mark B. Gerstein is an American scientist working in bioinformatics. As of 2009[update], he is co-director of the Yale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program, and Albert L. Williams Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Professor of Computer Science at Yale University.
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After graduating from Harvard College summa cum laude with an A.B. in Physics in 1989, Gerstein studied under Ruth Lynden-Bell in the chemistry department of Cambridge University and Cyrus Chothia of the British Medical Research Council, earning a doctorate in 1993 from the University of Cambridge. He then went on to postdoctoral research in bioinformatics at Stanford University from 1993-1996 under Michael Levitt.
Gerstein has a number of scientific publications [2][3][4][5][6] and non-scientific publications in more popular forums.[7] He serves on a number of editorial and advisory boards, including those of PLOS Computational Biology, Genome Research, GenomeBiology, and Molecular Systems Biology.
In addition to a W. M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholars award, Gerstein has received awards from the US Navy, IBM, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Donaghue Foundation. He is a Fellow of the AAAS. Other awards include a Herchel-Smith Scholarship supporting his doctoral work at Emmanuel College and a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship. He is a contributor to a number of scientific consortia including ENCODE, modENCODE and the 1000 Genomes Project.
Gerstein does research in the field of bioinformatics. 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, personal genomics, building tools in support of genome technologies (such as next-generation sequencing), analyzing molecular networks, and simulating macromolecular motions. Notable databases and tools that the group has developed include the Database of Macromolecular Motions, which categorizes macromolecular conformational change; tYNA,[8] which helps analyze molecular networks; PubNet,[9] which analyzes publication networks; PeakSeq,[10] which identifies regions in the genome bound by particular transcription factors; and PEMer,[11] which categorizes block variants in the genome. Gerstein has also written extensively on scientific communication and ways in which computational issues in molecular biology interface with broader aspects of computation in society.