M. Madan Babu, Ph.D., director of the Center of Excellence for Data Driven Discovery at St. Jude, was named a fellow with the Academy of Medical Sciences.
M. Madan Babu, Ph.D., director of the Center of Excellence for Data Driven Discovery at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, has been elected to a fellowship with the Academy of Medical Sciences, a British organization dedicated to the advancement of biomedical and health research.
The academy is an an independent organization that works to translate and implement health research to improve human health and welfare. Fellows come from a variety of disciplines, including laboratory science, academic medicine, clinical care or related fields such as ethics, social science and the law. Their discoveries and scholarship have helped to advance medical sciences.
Babu holds the St. Jude Endowed Chair in Biological Data Science in the department of Structural Biology. He joined the hospital in 2020 after 14 years with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, U.K., where he served as program leader in the Structural Studies Division.
He is known in the research world as a pioneer in data science-based approaches to revealing fundamental principles governing biological systems. Babu has developed state-of-the-art computational and machine learning methods to interrogate large-scale biological data from diverse organisms. His recent work has helped to show how individual genetic differences can result in variable drug response with implications for personalized medicine.
“I am honored for our work to be recognized by the Academy of Medical Sciences. I am thankful to have had the opportunity to do my research at the LMB, and now at St. Jude,” Babu said. “The collaborative environment and long-term support for fundamental research have made it possible for us to push the boundaries in the field of biomedical data science. I am most grateful to my mentors and colleagues, as well as my past and current group members.”
In 2019 Babu received the EMBO Gold Medal, which honors European life scientists under 40. He was recognized for his contributions to the field of computational biology and biological data science.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened more than 50 years ago. St. Jude freely shares the breakthroughs it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing and food — because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. To learn more, visit stjude.org or follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.