Mark Bender Gerstein is an American scientist working in

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

and

Data Science Data science is an interdisciplinary field that uses scientific methods, processes, algorithms and systems to extract or extrapolate knowledge and insights from noisy, structured and unstructured data, and apply knowledge from data across a br ...

. , he is co-director of the Yale

Computational Biology Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has fo ...

and Bioinformatics program. Mark Gerstein is

Albert L. Williams Albert Lynn Williams (March 17, 1911 – 1982) was an American business executive who was president of IBM from May 1961 until March 1966. Born in Berwick, Pennsylvania, Williams attended Beckley College and became a Certified Public Accountan ...

Professor of

Biomedical Informatics Health informatics is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic hea ...

, Professor of

Molecular Biophysics Molecular biophysics is a rapidly evolving interdisciplinary area of research that combines concepts in physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics and biology. It seeks to understand biomolecular systems and explain biological function in terms ...

& Biochemistry , Professor of

Statistics Statistics (from German language, German: ''wikt:Statistik#German, Statistik'', "description of a State (polity), state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of ...

, and Professor of Computer Science at Yale University. In 2018, Gerstein was named co-director of th
Yale Center for Biomedical Data Science.

Education

After graduating from Harvard College

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

with a Bachelor of Arts in physics in 1989, Gerstein did a PhD co-supervised by

Ruth Lynden-Bell Ruth Marion Lynden-Bell, FRS (born 7 December 1937) is a British chemist, emeritus professor of Queen's University Belfast and the University of Cambridge, and acting President of Murray Edwards College, Cambridge from 2011 to 2013. Education ...

at the University of Cambridge and

Cyrus Chothia Cyrus Homi Chothia (19 February 1942 – 26 November 2019) was an English biochemist who was an emeritus scientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at the University of Cambridge and emeritus fellow ...

at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology on

conformational change In biochemistry, a conformational change is a change in the shape of a macromolecule, often induced by environmental factors. A macromolecule is usually flexible and dynamic. Its shape can change in response to changes in its environment or oth ...

in proteins, graduating in 1993. He then went on to postdoctoral research in bioinformatics at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

from 1993 to 1996 supervised by Nobel-laureate Michael Levitt.

Research

Gerstein does research in the field of

. 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,Gina Kolata, (Sept. 5, 2012)
Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From Junk, Play Crucial Role
' NY Times personal genomics,

cancer genomics Oncogenomics is a sub-field of genomics that characterizes cancer-associated genes. It focuses on genomic, epigenomic and transcript alterations in cancer. Cancer is a genetic disease caused by accumulation of DNA mutations and epigenetic alterati ...

, 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 The Database of Macromolecular Motions is a bioinformatics database and software-as-a-service tool that attempts to categorize macromolecular motions, sometimes also known as conformational change. It was originally developed by Mark B. Gerstein ...

, which categorizes macromolecular

; 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. Gerstein's work has been published in peer reviewed

scientific journal In academic publishing, a scientific journal is a periodical publication intended to further the progress of science, usually by reporting new research. Content Articles in scientific journals are mostly written by active scientists such as s ...

s and non-scientific publications in more popular forums. His work has been highly cited, with an H greater than 100. He serves on a number of editorial and advisory boards, including those of ''

PLoS Computational Biology ''PLOS Computational Biology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering computational biology. It was established in 2005 by the Public Library of Science in association with the International Society for Computational B ...

'', '' Genome Research'', '' Genome Biology'', and ''

Molecular Systems Biology ''Molecular Systems Biology'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal covering systems biology at the molecular level (examples include: genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, microbial systems, the integration of cell signaling and r ...

''. He has been quoted in the New York Times, including on the front page, and in other major newspapers.

Awards and honors

In addition to a

W. M. Keck Foundation The W. M. Keck Foundation is an American charitable foundation supporting scientific, engineering, and medical research in the United States. It was founded in 1954 by William Myron Keck, founder and president of Superior Oil Company (now part ...

Distinguished Young Scholars award, Gerstein has received awards from the US Navy, IBM, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and th
Donaghue Foundation
He is a Fellow of the AAAS. Other awards include a Herchel-Smith Scholarship supporting his doctoral work at

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mon ...

and a

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation (Damon Runyon) is an American not-for-profit cancer research organization focused on "discovering the talent to discover the cure". The organization states that its goals are to: "identify the best an ...

Postdoctoral Fellowship. He is a contributor to a number of scientific consortia including ENCODE,

modENCODE The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is a public research project which aims to identify functional elements in the human genome. ENCODE also supports further biomedical research by "generating community resources of genomics data, software, ...

1000 Genomes Project The 1000 Genomes Project (abbreviated as 1KGP), launched in January 2008, was an international research effort to establish by far the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation. Scientists planned to sequence the genomes of at least one th ...

Brainspan
an
DOE Kbase
He was made a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2015.

References

External links

Mark Gerstein Laboratory
at Yale

at Yale Computer Science
Mark Gerstein
at Yale School of Medicine *
Mark Gerstein publications on ResearchGate
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Gerstein, Mark Bender 21st-century American biologists American bioinformaticians Harvard College alumni Stanford University alumni Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Yale University faculty Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge Yale Department of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry faculty