Rachel Melamed

Rachel Melamed is an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, affiliated with the Kennedy College of Sciences and the Center of Biomedical and Health Research in Data Sciences (CHORDS). Her research focuses on linking health and molecular data to understand disease mechanisms and identify interventions for conditions like cancer. She employs computational methods from computer science and epidemiology, integrating diverse datasets including health records, biobanks, and drug experiments.

Education: BA in Computer Science (Brown University), PhD in Biomedical Informatics (Columbia University), Postdoctoral training in Biomedical Data Science (University of Chicago).

Research Interests: Disease biology & genomics, data science, epidemiology, causal inference. Projects include studying drug impacts on cancer pathways, genetic overlaps between diseases, and leveraging big data for personalized medicine. She leads a lab with graduate and undergraduate researchers exploring computational biology, bioinformatics, and pharmacology.

Lab Team: Supervises students specializing in computational biology, statistics, and machine learning. Current members include Anugrah Vaishnav, Jianfeng Ke, Panagiotis Lalagkas, and others. Past researchers include Aylinh Eng and Bishoy Sargius.

Key Focus Areas: Cancer etiology, drug repurposing, genetic risk stratification, and translational bioinformatics. Her work bridges computational methods with clinical and biological datasets to uncover actionable insights in disease prevention and treatment.