David B. Blumenthal

David B. Blumenthal is an Assistant Professor and head of the Biomedical Network Science Lab at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). His work focuses on applying network science and AI to study molecular disease mechanisms and developing privacy-aware biomedical AI solutions. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and has held postdoctoral positions at TU Munich and the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. His research spans federated learning, graph algorithms, and systems medicine, with a strong emphasis on translational applications in healthcare.

Education:

• BSc/MSc Mathematics, Free University of Berlin & Technical University of Berlin
• BA/MA Philosophy, Free University of Berlin
• PhD in Computer Science, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
• Visiting PhD student at GREYC Research Lab, France

Research Interests: Blumenthal’s work integrates computational methods with biomedical data to uncover disease mechanisms. Key areas include federated learning for medical data privacy, network-based disease module discovery, and AI-driven drug repurposing. He develops tools like ROBUST-Web, NeDRex, and DataSAIL to address challenges in data leakage and heterogeneous data integration.

Awards:

• Best Poster Award (2022), Best Paper Awards (2021, 2017), Best PhD Student Award (2021)
• Recipient of German Academic Scholarship Foundation support

Grants: Leads projects funded by BMBF, DFG, and industry partners, including FLabNet (federated learning in paediatric oncology) and NetMap (dimensionality reduction in single-cell data). His work often bridges FAU’s engineering and medical faculties.

Labs/Teams: Heads the Biomedical Network Science Lab, collaborating with institutions like TU Munich, Bitspark GmbH, and Erlangen University Hospital on translational AI projects.