Leopold Parts PhD

Leo is a geneticist with broad interests in all areas of genomics. He focuses on figuring out the most important features to measure in individual cells, creating accurate computational models for their readouts, and finding out how they are changed by genomes and environment. After double majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics at MIT, Leo received his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2011 under the supervision of Richard Durbin.

In his thesis work, he studied sources of variation in gene expression, as well as using selection to map the genetic basis of fitness traits. This entailed creating probabilistic models of the generative processes and performing inference in them to estimate the desired properties of the world. The work was awarded the Grand Prize of life sciences PhDs in his native Estonia.