Research Field Guide
How to Get a Computational Biology Research Position
To get a Computational Biology research position, find professors who are actively publishing in Computational Biology, read what they actually work on, and email one of them a short, specific note. Much of the work is computational, so you can offer to contribute remotely.
Below are 12 professors publishing in Computational Biology right now, what each is working on, and how to reach out. Every name and topic is pulled from real, recent publication data, not a generic list.
Computational Biology professors who are actively publishing
| Professor | Institution | Recent research focus |
|---|---|---|
| Kevin W. Eliceiri | University of Wisconsin System | Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research |
| David J. Lipman | Johns Hopkins University | Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research |
| James J. Collins | Broad Institute | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| Bernhard Ø. Palsson | Novo Nordisk Foundation | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| Ilya Shmulevich | Institute for Systems Biology | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| Curtis Rueden | University of Wisconsin–Madison | Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research |
| Réka Albert | Pennsylvania State University | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| Fabian J. Theis | Helmholtz Zentrum München | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| Richard M. Murray | California Institute of Technology | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| John Quackenbush | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
| David S. Goodsell | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey | Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research |
| John C. Doyle | California Institute of Technology | Gene Regulatory Network Analysis |
Sourced from OpenAlex publication records. Click a name to see their full profile and recent papers.
What Computational Biology research involves
Computational biology uses code and math to make sense of biological systems. The work clusters around gene regulatory network analysis, modeling how cells make decisions, and the broader bioinformatics and biomedical pipelines that turn raw sequencing into biological meaning. Compared with wet-lab biology, the day-to-day is remote-friendly: you write scripts, build models, and analyze large datasets rather than running experiments at a bench. Many labs are happy to hand a capable student a dataset and a question to work on from anywhere. The strongest applicants pair real biology knowledge with programming, so they can ask whether a model's output actually makes biological sense.
How to email a Computational Biology professor
Computational biology labs value students who can both code and reason about biology, so show both. Offer to take on a piece of analysis remotely: parsing a dataset, reproducing a figure, or prototyping part of a model or pipeline they describe in a recent paper. Name your tools (Python or R, plus pandas, Bioconductor, or scikit-learn) and any biology coursework that lets you interpret results. Point to one specific paper, ideally on network modeling or a genomics method they use, and ask a question that shows you understood the method, not just the abstract. Avoid generic flattery and make your first ask small and doable.
Computational Biology overlaps with nearby fields. If you are casting a wider net, look at research positions in Bioinformatics, Genetics, Molecular Biology, and Machine Learning.