Fabio Zanini

Fabio Zanini is an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), leading a research group focused on computational biology, single-cell approaches, and transcriptomic analysis across diseases like severe dengue, neonatal lung disease, cancer, and marine biology. He previously conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University (2016-2019) and earned a PhD in Bioinformatics from the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and the University of Tuebingen (2015).

• Current Affiliation: Group leader, UNSW
• Previous Training: Postdoc (Stanford), PhD (Max Planck/University of Tuebingen)

His research spans single-cell RNA sequencing, computational virology, developmental cell biology, and bioinformatics tool development, with recent work on:

• Severe dengue progression (viral-host interactions, immune signatures)
• Lung development (endothelial cell diversity, hyperoxia-induced injury)
• Cancer genomics (mutant HSC clones, AZA therapy response)
• Marine biology (plankton transcriptomics, evolutionary analysis)
• Bioinformatics (HTSeq 2.0, northstar algorithm)

Recent scientific awards include grants from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative ($270,000), NIH R01 (multiple), ARC Discovery Grant, and NHMRC Ideas Grant. Notable contributions include:

• Northstar - Cell classification algorithm
• SpectralSeq - Hyperspectral-transcriptomic integration
• Tabula Muris - Mouse aging atlas

He has supervised research into hematopoietic stem cell regulation, lung vascular development, and autophagy in viral infections, with collaborations across Stanford, University of Sydney, and Harvard.