Mark Gerstein | |
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Born | Mark Bender Gerstein |
Residence | US, UK |
Citizenship | US |
Fields | Bioinformatics |
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Alma mater |
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Thesis | Protein recognition: surfaces and conformational change (1993) |
Doctoral advisor | |
Other academic advisors | Michael Levitt (postdoc) |
Doctoral students |
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Notable awards |
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Website |
Mark Bender 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.
After graduating from Harvard College summa cum laude with an Bachelor of Arts in Physics in 1989, Gerstein did a PhD co-supervised by Ruth Lynden-Bell at the University of Cambridge and Cyrus Chothia at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology on conformational change in proteins, graduating in 1993. He then went on to postdoctoral research in bioinformatics at Stanford University from 1993-1996 supervised by Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt.
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, cancer 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, which helps analyze molecular networks; PubNet, which analyzes publication networks; PeakSeq, which identifies regions in the genome bound by particular transcription factors; and CNVnator, 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 and to structuring scientific communication.