Søren Brunak

The Foundation’s broad and multidisciplinary approach has always appealed to me. I am honored to be included in this circle, and I look forward to gaining new insights into less familiar areas of research.

Biological and medical research is increasingly moving towards looking at all of our genes and human diseases simultaneously. I look forward to contributing interdisciplinary insights and experience that can identify new intersections and lead to new scientific breakthroughs.

Data-driven research is developing rapidly, and Denmark is particularly strong when it comes to digitalization. I hope to help further develop cross-disciplinary ideas that will make the Danish research landscape even more competitive.

Although I originally trained as a theoretical physicist, I have worked with biological and medical data throughout my career. I use data-driven methods as analysis tools, especially artificial neural networks. Given the large data volumes, supercomputer technology is also an important element. In my work as a professor of bioinformatics and disease systems biology at the University of Copenhagen, I combine molecular genetic data with phenotypic data, which is often sourced from electronic patient records and registries.