Knowles Lab

David Knowles, PhD, is a Core Faculty Member at the New York Genome Center. He holds a joint appointment as Assistant Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Systems Biology at Columbia University. His research focuses on the development of novel machine learning methods and their application to data analysis challenges in genomics with the aim to better understand the role of transcriptomic dysregulation across the spectrum from rare to common genetic disease. Another key area of study is better characterization of the genetic and environmental factors contributing to mRNA expression and splicing variation. The lab works with diverse research groups in collecting large-scale genomics datasets in the context of neurological disease and developing novel genomic technologies including single cell methods, forward genetic screens and long-read transcriptomics. Dr. Knowles received a MEng from the University of Cambridge and a MSc Bioinformatics and Systems Biology from Imperial College London. He obtained a PhD in Engineering (Machine Learning) from the University of Cambridge under the mentorship of Dr. Zoubin Ghahramani and was the Roger Needham Scholar at Wolfson College, funded by Microsoft Research. Prior to joining NYGC, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, under the mentorship of Drs. Sylvia Plevritis (Center for Computational Systems Biology/Radiology) and Jonathan Pritchard (Genetics), and Daphne Koller (Computer Science).