Summary

Fabian Theis is Director of the Computational Health Center at Helmholtz Munich and Professor of Mathematical Modelling of Biological Systems at the Technical University of Munich. His research lies at the intersection of mathematics, computer science, and biomedicine, using data-driven methods to decode cellular behaviour. A leading authority in single-cell genomics, he develops AI and machine-learning approaches to analyse datasets such as single-cell RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics. By modelling cellular heterogeneity, reconstructing cell fates and integrating multi-omics data, his group turns mechanistic insight into clinically actionable biomarkers and therapeutic strategies.

A central focus of his work is translational and precision medicine: in close collaboration with experimental and clinical partners, he applies computational models across diverse disease areas – from immune and metabolic disorders to cancer – to improve early diagnosis, patient stratification and prediction of treatment response. He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and leads or co-leads initiatives including the Munich School for Data Science and the ELLIS Munich Unit. His contributions to computational biomedicine have been recognised with numerous honours, including the 2023 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize.