Mark Bender Gerstein

Mark B. Gerstein is an American physical and biological scientist working in bioinformatics. As of 2006 he is co-director of the Yale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics program, and Albert L. Williams Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Associate Professor of Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Yale University.

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Education

After graduating from Harvard University summa cum laude with an A.B. in Physics in 1989, Gerstein studied under Sir Alan Fersht and Cyrus Chothia of the British Medical Research Council, earning a doctorate in biophysics and chemistry in 1993 from the University of Cambridge. He then went on to postdoctoral research in bioinformatics at Stanford University from 1993-1996 under Michael Levitt.

Publications and Editorial Positions

Gerstein is editor of the Sequences and Topology section for the journal Current Opinion in Structural Biology. Gerstein serves on the editorial boards of Functional and Integrative Genomics, the Journal of Structural and Functional Genomics, and BioMed Central's Proteome Science and Genome Biology.

Awards

In addition to a W. M. Keck Foundation Distinguished Young Scholars award, Gerstein has received Young Investigator Awards from the U.S. Navy, IBM, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, and the Donaghue Foundation. Gerstein's other awards include a Herchel-Smith Scholarship supporting his doctoral work at Emmanuel College and a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Research Focus

Gerstein does research in the field of bioinformatics. This involves applying a range of computational techniques to problems in molecular biology, including statistical characterization of macromolecular physical properties, cellular function, and phylogenetic distribution, often by developing scientific databases, such as The Database of Macromolecular Motions which categorizes macromolecular conformational change.