Rate My Professor Gregory Way

Gregory Way, PhD, MS, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, School of Medicine, where he has served since September 2021 and leads the Way Lab. He earned his PhD in Genomics and Computational Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, MS in Biology from Saint Joseph’s University in 2014, and BS in Biology and Environmental Studies from The College of New Jersey in 2011. Previously, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Imaging Platform at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard from 2019 to 2021, focusing on image-based profiling, high-throughput assay development, software engineering, and drug discovery. Additional appointments include Scientific Advisory Board Member at Infixion Biosciences since 2019, Visiting Scientist at the Broad Institute, Board Member of the CytoData Society, Member of the Cancer Systems Biology Consortium, and Board of Directors for the Society of Biomolecular Imaging and Informatics.

Way's research centers on biomedical data science, deep learning, and high-content microscopy to develop cell morphology as a systems biology readout for disease states, enhancing drug discovery and clinical decision-making. His lab applies these methods to pediatric cancer, Neurofibromatosis Type 1, cardiac fibrosis, and brain cancer, utilizing open science practices with public data and software. Key contributions include developing the Cytominer ecosystem, BioBombe, Tybalt, and Project Cognoma. Selected publications are 'Machine Learning Detects Pan-cancer Ras Pathway Activation in The Cancer Genome Atlas' (Cell Reports, 2018), 'Predicting drug polypharmacology from cell morphology readouts using variational autoencoder latent space arithmetic' (bioRxiv, 2021; published 2022), 'High-content microscopy reveals a morphological signature of defective NF1 Schwann cells' (eLife, 2023), and 'A field guide to cultivating computational biology' (PLoS Biology, 2021). With over 3,200 citations and an h-index of 17, his work influences genomic and morphological data analysis. Major awards include the American Association for Cancer Research Team Science Award (2020) and the Interstellar Beyond Award from the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (2024) for pyroptosis research in glioblastoma.