M. Madan Babu leads the Regulatory Genomics and Systems Biology programme at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and is a Fellow of the Lister Institute.
His group is interested in understanding how regulation is achieved in cellular systems and the influence it has on the evolution of organisms and their genomes.
In his work, Dr. Babu employs experimental and computational analysis and has developed a range of novel interdisciplinary methods using genome-scale approaches to better understand cellular and genetic regulation.
Dr. Babu is a distinguished scientist whose work has been recognised across different fields over recent years, and the Lister Institute is proud to have awarded him a fellowship that has helped play a role in this success.
In March of 2018 Dr. Babu was named Life Sciences Laureate at the inaugural 2018 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in the United Kingdom. Founded by the Blavatnik Family Foundation and administered by the New York Academy of Sciences, the awards recognise young faculty researchers in three disciplines of science and engineering.
Dr. Babu’s outstanding research in life sciences, such as his group’s recent work on high-throughput discovery of functional disordered protein regions using machine learning approaches published in Molecular Systems Biology and pharmacogenomics of GPCR Drug Targets published in Cell, are contributing to solving crucial problems in human health and medicine. One of his other recent projects includes the Protein Contacts Atlas which we have previously discussed.
In this year Dr. Babu also received the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Innovator Award. This award is given to early-stage researchers who have consistently made outstanding contributions to the field of computational biology, and who continue to forge new directions today.
Beyond research accomplishments, Dr. Babu’s group also places a strong emphasis on mentoring younger scientists and students. An undergraduate student in his group Andrija Sente, who was supported by a Lister Summer Studentship, has recently published a paper as a first and co-corresponding author in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology. This paper was jointly last authored by Dr Tilman Flock, a former graduate student in his group. This paper, entitled Molecular mechanism of modulating arrestin conformation by GPCR phosphorylation, was also presented as a poster during a recent Lister meeting in Cambridge.
The Lister Institute is proud to help support Dr. Babu’s work, and that of his team, and we are looking forward to supporting his future research.
