image: M. Madan Babu, PhD, is the first chief data scientist at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Credit: St. Jude Children's Hospital
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital today announced M. Madan Babu, PhD, FRS, as the institution’s first Chief Data Scientist, Senior Vice President for Data Science, and leader of the newly formed Office of Data Science. This $195 million research enterprise will have 115 new positions.
In his new role, Babu will bring new, advanced computing technologies and data science approaches to biomedical research. His team will also facilitate the integration of biological and biomedical data, foster a data science research culture, and build international collaborations.
“Our ability to quickly analyze huge datasets is becoming increasingly crucial to scientific breakthroughs, particularly when it comes to biochemistry and cell biology,” said James R. Downing, MD, president and CEO of St. Jude. “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.”
“Dr. Babu is a pioneer in developing and applying data science-based approaches to reveal fundamental principles of biological systems,” said J. Paul Taylor MD, PhD, executive vice president and scientific director. “Through this initiative, we aim to create a seamless scientific ecosystem where experimental, clinical and data scientists collaborate effectively to advance our understanding of healthy and disease states.”
The expanding role of data science in biomedical research
St. Jude accelerated its journey into data science with genomic studies and their associated molecular and clinical data, providing data and analysis resources to the global research community. Today, there are an estimated 150 petabytes of biological data from open sources. The explosion of different types of data in recent years such as imaging, structural, chemical, and population data has increased both the complexity and sheer amount of biological information available to scientists who need to translate the data into findings and then cures. The challenge is to integrate and derive actionable information from these large and diverse datasets.
“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 joined St. Jude in the Structural Biology department in 2020, following a 14-year tenure as a program leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. He is a recipient of the Gold Medal from the European Molecular Biology Organization and a recent inductee of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society of London. He has made major contributions in the fields of G-protein coupled receptors, intrinsically disordered proteins and gene regulation.
Babu earned his PhD in computational genomics from Cambridge University and his undergraduate degree from Anna University, Chennai, India. Babu completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer, sickle cell disease, and other life-threatening disorders. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened more than 60 years ago. St. Jude shares the breakthroughs it makes to help doctors and researchers at local hospitals and cancer centers around the world improve the quality of treatment and care for even more children. To learn more, visit stjude.org, read St. Jude Progress, a digital magazine and follow St. Jude on social media @stjuderesearch.