Michael Brent

The Brent Lab is developing and applying mathematical and computational methods for mapping gene regulation networks, modeling them quantitatively, and synthesizing new network designs in living cells. This work includes basic research aimed at understanding how cells process and respond to information as well as applications to the study of infectious disease and the study of human genetics. See the lab webpage, https://mblab.wustl.edu for more information on our research.

Biography

After completing his PhD in Computer Science at MIT, Professor Brent served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Cognitive Science at the Johns Hopkins University, where his research focused on computational modeling of how children learn language.

He brought these interests to Washington University in St. Louis in 1999, where he developed a second research program in computational biology and eventually phased out computational linguistics. From 2001 to 2008 he focused on computational and molecular methods for improving the accuracy of genome annotation. Since 2008, Professor Brent has focused on computational and molecular methods for mapping and modeling gene regulation networks.

Professor Brent was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2012.