Sumaiya Iqbal, Ph.D.

Sumaiya Iqbal is a senior group leader in the Ladders to Cures (L2C) Accelerator at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard — an initiative to accelerate advances towards treatments and cures for patients with rare genetic diseases. She is also an associate member of the Cancer Data Sciences Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC). She developed the Broad Institute Genomics 2 Proteins (G2P) portal, a human proteome-wide discovery platform for linking genetic screening outputs to protein sequences and structures.

Iqbal is a computer scientist by training but a life science researcher by determination. At the Broad, she leads the bioinformatics and machine learning group aimed at connecting genomics to proteins and mechanisms using data sciences, statistics, and machine learning (ML)/AI. The focus of the Iqbal lab is the following: building bioinformatics resources to bridge the gap across complex multi-omics data types; developing methods to unveil the molecular effect of genetic/synthetic mutations on protein structure-function relationships; and building ML/AI-driven innovative tools for new target and small-molecule hit discovery. Iqbal lab works across all disease areas, with a special focus on rare genetic diseases and pediatric cancer.

Iqbal started her lab at the Broad Institute in 2023, after two years as a postdoc at the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit of MGH, Harvard Medical School, and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, and three years as a research scientist at the Center for Development of Therapeutics at the Broad. Iqbal has earned multiple awards, including the Broad Institute SPARC award, the Merkin Institute award for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and the BroadIgnite award. She is also a recipient of the Broad Institute Staff Scientists Distinction Award in Scientific Collaboration and serves as the chair for the Broad Institute Machine Learning for Drug Discovery symposium.

Iqbal holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the LSU New Orleans, and a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in computer science from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

Contact Sumaiya Iqbal via email at sumaiya@broadinstitute.org.