Bonnie Berger

Bio

Bonnie Berger is the Simons Professor of Mathematics at MIT and serves as head of Computation and Biology group at MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab. Her recent work focuses on designing algorithms and generative AI models to enhance biological insights from advances in automated data collection and the subsequent large data sets drawn from them. She works on a diverse set of problems, including Structural Bioinformatics, Compressive Genomics, Network Inference, Genomic Privacy, and Medical Genomics. Additionally, she collaborates closely with biologists in order to design experiments to maximally leverage the power of computation for biological explorations.

After beginning her career working in algorithms at MIT, she was one of the pioneer researchers in the area of computational biology and, together with the many students she has mentored, has been instrumental in defining the field. Professor Berger is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Fellow of Association for Computing Machinery, International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, American Mathematical Society, and Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In 2019, she was recognized by ISCB with their Accomplishments by a Senior Scientist Award. She received the NIH Margaret Pittman Director's Award, the SIAM Sonya Kovalevsky Lecture Prize and an Honorary Doctorate from EPFL. Earlier in her career, she received an NSF Career Award, the Biophysical Society's Dayhoff Award, and recognition as Technology Review Magazine's inaugural TR100 top young innovators. She won the RECOMB Test of Time Award both in 2010 and 2019. She has recently served on the editorial boards of Genome Biology, Annual Reviews for Biomedical Data Science, Bioinformatics, IEEE/ACM TCBB, and Cell Systems. In addition, Professor Berger is Faculty of Harvard/MIT Health Science & Technology, an Associate Member of the Broad Institute, and Affiliated Faculty of Harvard Medical School. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences Class of 2020.