Ran Blekhman
Associate Professor
Department of Medicine
Ran Blekhman studies the human microbiome—the collection of all microbes that live in and on the human body—and how these microbes interact with our own genome and genes. His laboratory uses high-throughput genomics technologies and employs computational, statistical, machine learning, and population genetic analytical approaches, with the goal of understanding how we interact with our microbial communities, how host-microbe interactions affect human disease, and how the symbiosis between us and our microbiome evolved.
His research has been published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, Nature Microbiology, PLOS Biology, Science, Cell Reports, Cell, eLife, PLOS Genetics, Trends in Genetics, and Cell Reports. He was named a Sloan Research Fellow in the field of computational and evolutionary molecular biology, and a Scialog: Microbiome, Neurobiology, and Disease Fellow.
Blekhman studied biology and computer science at Tel Aviv University and holds a PhD in human genetics from the University of Chicago. He was a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Cornell University. Most recently, he was an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he was awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship and recognized with a Northrop Professorship in recognition of work that has helped define the trajectory of his academic field.