Team Bio

We are an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the forefront of machine learning and biology research. We've pioneered new ML approaches for generative modeling, active learning, bayesian optimization, uncertainty quantification, and more. These methods have been instrumental in predicting protein structures and function, as well as advancing protein engineering.

For more info about us:

- Marks lab: https://www.deboramarkslab.com…

- OATML: https://oatml.cs.ox.ac.uk/inde...

Pascal Notin

I am a computer scientist and researcher at the intersection of AI and computational biology. My mission is to develop novel AI-driven models to support the engineering of enzymes, targeting climate change mitigation and sustainability.

I have recently joined the Marks lab, where I lead the development of ML approaches for protein engineering. My academic journey took shape with a PhD in the Oxford Applied and Theoretical Machine Learning Group, under the supervision of Yarin Gal.

This journey was marked by breakthroughs in protein modeling, mutation effects prediction, viral escape anticipation, and drug design. My findings have been published in premier scientific journals and machine learning conferences, including Nature, NeurIPS, ICML, and ICLR.

I have co-created and am the lead organizer for the Machine Learning for Drug Discovery (MLDD) workshop at ICLR, co-organized the GeneDisco challenges, and co-organize the Workshop on Computational Biology (WCB) at ICML.

I have several years of applied machine learning experience developing AI solutions, primarily within the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Before going back to academia, I was a Senior Manager at McKinsey & Company in the New York and Paris offices, where I was leading cross-disciplinary teams on fast-paced analytics engagements.

For my academic endeavors, I am the recipient of a GSK.ai award and recognized as a Google Cloud Innovator.

More info at: https://www.pascalnotin.com/

Nathan Rollins

My mission is to translate the immense capabilities of biomolecules into human applications.

While keeping one foot in academia, I am a senior scientist at Seismic Therapeutic, a biomedicine startup launched out of my PhD and post-doc work with Debora Marks. At Seismic, my role is to develop machine learning methods for accelerating discovery and improving properties of protein therapeutics. To this end, as throughout my career, I work in equal parts as a synthetic biologist and as a computer scientist.

The themes of my work are symmetric:
(1) Identify challenges in bioscience & design ML solutions in response.
(2) Identify opportunities in bioscience unlocked by ML & design wetlab experiments to take full advantage.

I started on this path ten years ago, designing de novo proteins at the UW Institute for Protein Design, while I studied chemical engineering and biochemistry. I then pursued a PhD in Engineering and Physics in Biology, supervised jointly by computational biologist Debora Marks and synthetic biologist Pamela Silver. In that time, I gained a fantastic breadth of experience - advancing projects to: design enzymes [1], drugs [2], and more [3,4,5]; predict virus evolution [6,7,8,9,10]; and to maximize what's learned from next-gen wetlab methods such as deep mutational scanning [11,12].

To learn more, see my papers on Google Scholar.

Yarin Gal

I am an Associate Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Oxford, where I lead the Oxford Applied and Theoretical Machine Learning (OATML) group. I made several contributions to modern Bayesian deep learning to support the quantification of uncertainty in deep learning models. These methods have been widely used in industry and academia across various application domains, such as medicine, robotics, computer vision, or astronomy.

Beyond my academic work, I have worked with various industrial partners on deploying robust ML tools safely and responsibly. I am a co-chair for the NASA FDL AI committee, an advisor with Canadian medical imaging company Imagia and Japanese robotics company Preferred Networks, and have recently been appointed as the Research Director for the UK AI taskforce.

More info at: https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/people/yarin.gal/website/

Debora Marks

I established my laboratory eight years ago after a career in industry and more recent degrees in mathematics and computational biology, aiming to accelerate fundamental discoveries in biomedicine and biotechnology. I have developed statistical methods including novel machine learning methods for biological data with an emphasis on interpretability and causality. My lab was able predict 3-dimensional protein structures from sequence alone, predict the fitness effects of human genetic variation, make robust generative models for protein therapeutics, antibody design and deimmunization design and discover new causes of microbial resistance using whole genome epistatic models. My mission is to develop machine learning for design of biological interventions for environment and human health now focusing on viral genome forecasting, infectious disease pathophysiology.

My work has been published in premier biological venues (e.g. Nature, Nature Biotechnology) as well as premier Machine Learning /AI venues (NeurIPS, ICML). In 2016, I received the ICSB Overton Award for outstanding accomplishment to the field of computational biology, in 2018 the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Ben Barres Early Career Acceleration Award in the Neurodegeneration Challenge Design, in 2020 an NIH Director's Transformative award for antibody design and in 2022 I became a Fellow of ISCB for outstanding contribution to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics.

More info at: https://www.deboramarkslab.com/deboramarks