معرفی
Romain Lopez is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Biology at New York University, with a joint appointment in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Biology. He will be joining NYU in September 2025, bringing expertise at the intersection of machine learning and computational biology. Prior to joining NYU, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Genentech and Stanford Medicine from 2021 to 2025, working with Jonathan Pritchard and Aviv Regev.
Dr. Lopez received his educational training at prestigious institutions:
- PhD in Computer Science (2021) from the University of California, Berkeley, advised by Mike Jordan and Nir Yosef
- M.S. in Applied Mathematics (2016) from École polytechnique, Palaiseau, France
Dr. Lopez's research focuses on developing machine learning methods to understand biological systems at the cellular level. His work bridges computational techniques with biological applications, particularly in single-cell and spatial omics analysis. He pioneered probabilistic approaches for single-cell analysis with scVI and co-developed scvi-tools, now widely adopted tools in the field. His research spans deep generative models, causal inference, perturbation modeling, and representation learning for biological data.
His publication record demonstrates a consistent trajectory of innovation in computational biology, with recent work focusing on spatial biology, disentangled representations of cellular perturbations, and causal modeling of cellular responses. He has made significant contributions to the field of single-cell analysis, developing methods that help scientists interpret complex cellular data and predict how cells respond to various perturbations.
Dr. Lopez has received numerous honors and awards for his research:
- Best Paper Award from the ICML Workshop on AI for Science (2024)
- Best Paper Award Honorable Mention from the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (2021)
- Best Student Poster Award from the ICML Workshop on Computational Biology (2019)
- UC Berkeley EECS Departmental Graduate Fellowship (2016)
- Carnot Foundation Fellowship (2016)
- Monahan Foundation Fellowship (2016)
- French National Defence Medal, Bronze Echelon (2014)
At NYU, Dr. Lopez will lead the Biological Machine Learning group, which develops probabilistic machine learning methods to uncover biological mechanisms governing cellular behavior and disease. His lab focuses on creating tools that transform complex cellular data into biological insights, with applications in understanding cancer, immune responses, and fundamental cellular processes. His work has significant implications for precision medicine and drug discovery.
