Madan Babu Mohan has pioneered data science approaches to reveal fundamental principles in biological systems. His work has defined data-driven discovery, generating new knowledge from the integration, mining, and analyses of diverse large-scale biological datasets. Madan's research interest spans biological and organizational scales, focusing on three distinct areas: G-protein–coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling, intrinsically disordered protein regions (IDRs), and gene regulation.
His work ranges from atomic-level investigations of protein structure to population-level studies of human genetics data. He has defined the mechanisms of action and enabled interpretation of the effects of human polymorphisms, disease-causing mutations, and isoforms of GPCRs. Madan's work has helped establish that IDRs have critical roles in biology and disease, propelling the study of disordered proteins from a niche area to one of broad significance. His work deciphering general principles for the organization and evolution of gene networks and discovering new genome-wide rules for the control of gene expression has pushed the field in new directions.
Madan's work has been recognized by several awards, including the Balfour Prize (2011), Colworth Medal (2013), Francis Crick Medal and Lecture (2015), the Blavatnik Award for Life Sciences (2018), and the EMBO Gold Medal (2019). He is an elected member of EMBO (2016), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2017), and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (2021).
Professional position
- Member, Endowed Chair and Director, Centre for Data Driven Discovery, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
