Ben Lehner, PhD

Ben Lehner, Ph.D., is Head of Generative Genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, group leader at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Honorary Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge, and founder and chief scientific advisor at ALLOX. The goal of the Generative Genomics programme is to combine data production at scale with AI/machine learning to accelerate the ability to understand, predict, engineer, and therapeutically modulate biological systems. Toward this goal, his lab has developed and scaled methods to quantify the effects of millions of sequence variants on the properties of proteins and RNAs, including their stability, aggregation, binding affinities and specificities, expression, and long-range energetic coupling, or allostery. His previous research has addressed foundational questions in genetics, including why genetically identical individuals are not identical, how the physiology and environment of one generation alters subsequent generations, why mutations occur at different rates in different genes, and how mutations interact to alter the activities of molecules and the characteristics of individuals. His research has been recognized by multiple prizes, including the EMBO Gold Medal, the Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences, the Eppendorf Award, the Balfour Prize, and the King Jaume I Prize. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society.