Raul Rabadan, PhD

Raul Rabadan leads a highly interdisciplinary lab with researchers from the fields of mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, and medicine, with the common goal of solving pressing biomedical problems through quantitative computational models. The amount of high-throughput data in biological and clinical systems — from next-generation sequencing experiments to electronic health records — is increasing dramatically, allowing for the development of a quantitative understanding of these complex systems. Rabadan's lab consists of an interdisciplinary team developing mathematical and computational tools to uncover patterns of evolution in biological systems—in particular, RNA viruses and cancer.

Rabadan's scientific work has led to more than 90 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many in the highest impact factor journals in their fields, such as New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, Science, Nature Genetics, Nature Medicine, Cell, Cancer Cell, Journal of Experimental Medicine, Proceedings of Natural Academy of Sciences, and PLoS Pathogens, among others. Due to their significant implications for human health, several of Rabadan's results have been featured by the international press, including CNN, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Associated Press, Reuters International, and The Economist. His work has led to novel therapies that are being tested in several clinical trials with extremely promising results.

He has been named one of Popular Science's Brilliant 10 (2010), a Stewart Trust Fellow (2013), and he received the Harold and Golden Lamport Award at Columbia University (2014). Raul Rabadan received his PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2001 and went on to conduct research in that field for five years at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland and at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at Princeton. In 2006 he joined the Systems Biology program at IAS, as a Martin A. and Helen Chooljian Member. He moved to Columbia University as an Assistant Professor in 2008, with a joint appointment in the Department of Systems Biology and the Department of Biomedical Informatics.