Stein Aerts is the founding director of the VIB Center for AI and Computational Biology in Leuven, Belgium. His lab uses a unique combination of software development, technology development, fly and mouse models, with machine learning approaches to understand how DNA sequences are interpreted by transcription factors and other chromatin proteins to pattern specific cell types of complex organisms, in particular the fly, bird and mammalian brains.
Stein’s group made fundamental contributions to our understanding how the genomic code is read and how it instructs normal and disease states. Amongst many fundamental discoveries, Stein is the key figure of the Fly Cell Atlas defining most of the fly’s cell types, found surprising similarities between mammalian and bird brains, and was able to generate entire synthetic enhancers allowing tissue specific expression. His lab developed SCENIC, SCope and various other tools, which many of you might have used to analyse single cell omics data.
