Tennessee-based pediatric treatment and research facility, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, has appointed Indian-American computational biologist and bioinformatician M. Madan Babu, as its first chief data scientist and senior vice president for data science.
In this role, Babu will lead a newly established Office of Data Science, a $195 million research initiative aimed at enhancing pediatric biomedical research through advanced data science. The initiative will also create 115 new positions.
Babu will also drive efforts to integrate biological and biomedical data, apply innovative computing technologies, and cultivate a data-centric research culture at St. Jude. His team will foster international collaborations to advance pediatric medicine, specifically for children with catastrophic diseases.
James R. Downing, president and CEO of St. Jude, emphasized the growing importance of data science in biomedical research. “Under the leadership of Dr. Babu, a globally recognized expert in this field, our Office of Data Science will strengthen data-sharing between the lab and the clinic, accelerating our progress in finding cures and developing treatments for children with catastrophic diseases,” Downing said.
J. Paul Taylor, executive vice president and scientific director, praised Babu as a pioneer in applying data science to biological systems. “Babu is a pioneer in developing and applying data science-based approaches to reveal fundamental principles of biological systems,” Taylor said.
Babu, who joined St. Jude in 2020 from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, expressed excitement about his new role. “St. Jude is a unique place and I am honored to lead this initiative,” Babu said. “With our intellectual ecosystem of talented clinical, experimental and data scientists united under the same mission, there’s no better place than St. Jude to build a data science enterprise of this magnitude.”
Babu obtained his Bachelor of Technology degree from Anna University, India, and PhD in computational genomics at the University of Cambridge.
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