Michael Baym

Dr. Michael Baym is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School with affiliate appointments in Microbiology and the Laboratory of Systems Pharmacology, and as an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. He leads the Baym Lab, which studies microbial evolutionary genomics and antibiotic resistance through a hybrid of experimental, computational, and theoretical approaches.

His research focuses on:

• Antibiotic Resistance Evolution and practical interventions
• Mobile Genetic Elements (plasmids, phages, transposons)
• Computational Genomic Algorithms for big data analysis
• Synthetic Biology tools and technologies

Key recent publications explore phage discovery systems, phylogenetic compression of microbial genomes, and RNA-guided gene drives in plasmids. His work is supported by multiple NIH/NIGMS and NSF grants including a MIRA award.

Scientific honors include:

• Packard Fellowship (2018)
• Pew Biomedical Scholarship (2020)
• Sloan Research Fellowship (2020)
• A. Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award (2021)
• SSQBio Mentorship Award (2022)

The lab actively trains PhD students and postdoctoral fellows with alumni occupying academic and industry positions globally. Current team members include researchers from interdisciplinary backgrounds working at the intersection of experiment, computation, and theory.