Aviad Tsherniak is associate director of the Cancer Data Science group of the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In general, Tsherniak’s group is interested in the insights that can be discovered by integrating multiple types of cancer genomic data. More specifically, the group’s members are currently focused on defining a Cancer Dependency Map. This involves identifying genes on which a subset of cancers depend or small molecules to which a subset of cancers are sensitive, and determining the molecular markers that define these subsets. The goal of this work is to highlight therapeutically relevant cancer vulnerabilities that would lead to new drug development efforts and better understanding of the underlying biological mechanisms.

Prior to coming to the Broad Institute in 2007, Tsherniak worked in IBM Research Labs’ Machine Learning group on problems that he describes as computationally similar to the problems he works on now, but instead of tumors, the group was looking into misbehaving IBM servers. Tsherniak holds B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in math and computer science from Tel Aviv University.

Contact Tsherniak via email at [first name] at broadinstitute.org.