Dr. Jill Mesirov

Biography

Leading computational biologist Jill P. Mesirov has been appointed as the Associate Vice Chancellor for Computational Health Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. A professor in the School of Medicine and Moores Cancer Center, Mesirov previously served as the Associate Director and Chief Informatics Officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she directed the Computational Biology Bioinformatics Program. Her research focuses on applying machine learning methods to functional genomics data in two main areas: cancer and infectious disease. In cancer research, her team analyzes molecular data to determine underlying biological mechanisms specific to tumor subtypes and to stratify patients according to their relative risks of relapse. In the area of infectious disease, the team employs functional data to understand host-pathogen relationships in malaria and to identify biomarkers for the differential diagnosis of viral and bacterial diseases, as well as for vaccine efficacy. Additionally, Mesirov is dedicated to developing biologist-friendly software tools that make resources freely accessible to the entire biomedical research community, including popular software packages such as Gene Set Enrichment Analysis and GenePattern. With extensive experience in high-performance computing, she has previously managed projects at IBM and served as the director of research at Thinking Machines Corporation. Mesirov earned her PhD in mathematics from Brandeis University and has held notable positions such as associate executive director at the American Mathematical Society. She is a fellow of multiple prestigious organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Mathematical Society, and has been actively involved in various advisory committees.

Research Interests