Marinka Zitnik

Brief Bio

Marinka Zitnik is an Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School, Associate Faculty at Kempner Institute for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence at Harvard University, and Associate Member at Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Zitnik investigates foundations of AI that contribute to the scientific understanding of medicine and therapeutic design, eventually enabling AI to learn and innovate on its own. Her research won best paper and research awards, including the Overton Prize, Kavli Fellowship of the National Academy of Sciences, Kaneb Fellowship award at Harvard Medical School, NSF CAREER Award, awards from the International Society for Computational Biology, International Conference in Machine Learning, Bayer Early Excellence in Science, Amazon Faculty Research, Google Faculty Research, Roche Alliance with Distinguished Scientists, and two Sanofi iDEA-iTECH Awards.

Extended Bio

Marinka Zitnik is an Associate Professor at Harvard in the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Zitnik is Associate Faculty at the Kempner Institue for the Study of Natural and Artificial Intelligence, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard Data Science.

Before joining Harvard, she was a postdoctoral scholar in Computer Science at Stanford University. She was also a member of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub at Stanford. She received her bachelor’s degree, double majoring in computer science and mathematics, and then graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Ljubljana just three years later while also researching at Imperial College London, University of Toronto, Baylor College of Medicine, and Stanford University.

This research received best paper and research awards from International Society for Computational Biology, Bayer Early Excellence in Science Award and International Conference in Machine Learning, Amazon Faculty Research Award, Google Faculty Research Scholar Award, Roche Alliance with Distinguished Scientists Award, Sanofi iDEA-iTECH Awards in 2023 and in 2025, Rising Star Award in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), and Next Generation Recognition in Biomedicine.

Dr. Zitnik received the Kavli Fellowship by the US National Academy of Sciences and the Kaneb Fellowship award at Harvard Medical School. She also received the NSF CAREER Award. Her research has also been recognized with the 2026 Overton Prize.

Dr. Zitnik is an ELLIS Scholar in the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS) Society. She is a member of the Science Working Group at NASA Space Biology. She is also the 2025 Member of the Senior Common Room at Leverett House at Harvard University.

Dr. Zitnik co-founded Therapeutics Data Commons and is the faculty lead of the AI4Science initiative.

Dr. Zitnik is the recipient of the 2022 Young Mentor Award at Harvard Medical School.