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

October 2023