Michael Menden

Michael P. Menden is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, a position he has held since August 2023. He serves as Head of the Menden Laboratory for Computational Biomedicine within the School of Biomedical Sciences. Prior to this, Menden was Group Leader at the Computational Health Center, Institute of Computational Biology at Helmholtz Munich, Germany, where he also headed the DZD Computational Biology Unit, supervising 12 PhD students and two postdocs. He remains a Visiting Group Leader there. Menden earned his PhD in Computational Biology from the University of Cambridge in 2016 and conducted postdoctoral research at EMBL-EBI in the United Kingdom.

Menden's research develops advanced biostatistical and machine learning methods applied to deep molecularly characterized biomedical datasets to uncover disease etiologies and identify intervention strategies, with a strong emphasis on precision medicine and drug discovery. His expertise includes computational cancer pharmacogenomics, analyzing high-throughput drug screens, CRISPR lethality, and resistance data to predict drug sensitivity, synergy, and biomarkers for patient stratification. This extends to translational pharmacogenomics in tuberculosis resistance, inflammatory skin diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and diabetes through projects like bayresq.net and UNITE4TB. He has published 33 peer-reviewed papers amassing over 5,200 citations and an h-index of 20. Notable works include 'A landscape of pharmacogenomic interactions in cancer' (Cell, 2016), 'Machine learning prediction of cancer cell sensitivity to drugs based on genomic and chemical properties' (PLoS One, 2013), 'Community assessment to advance computational prediction of cancer drug combinations in a pharmacogenomic screen' (Nature Communications, 2019), and 'Generative artificial intelligence empowers digital twins in drug discovery and clinical trials' (Expert Opinion on Drug Discovery, 2024). Menden received the European Research Council Starting Grant in 2020 and the Rising Star in Drug Discovery Award from the University of Cardiff in 2022. He co-filed a patent on generative AI for clinical trials with Roche in July 2023 and collaborates with leading institutions such as the Sanger Institute, AstraZeneca, and Technical University of Munich.

Professional Email: michael.menden@unimelb.edu.au