Manolis Kellis, Ph.D.

Professor, Computer Science; Head, MIT Computational Biology Group; Institute Member, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Massachusetts Institute of Technology


Manolis Kellis is a professor of computer science at MIT, a member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT, and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group (compbio.mit.edu). His research spans an unusually broad spectrum of areas, including disease genetics, epigenomics, gene circuitry, noncoding ribonucleic acids (RNAs), comparative genomics and phylogenetics. He has authored more than 150 journal publications that have been cited more than 40,000 times. He has helped direct several large-scale genomics projects, including the Roadmap Epigenomics project, the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, the Genotype Tissue-Expression (GTEx) project, and comparative genomics projects in mammals, flies and yeast. He received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the NSF CAREER award, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Sloan Research Fellowship, the MIT Technology Review TR35 recognition, the Athens Information Technology (AIT) Niki Award, the Spira Teaching Award, and the George M. Sprowls Award for the best Ph.D. thesis in computer science at MIT.

Dr. Kellis lived in Greece and France before moving to the United States, and he studied and conducted research at MIT, the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and the Cold Spring Harbor Lab. For more information, please visit http://compbio.mit.edu.

Funded Research

These projects were made possible from Cure Alzheimer's Fund support.

Selected Publications

These published papers resulted from Cure Alzheimer’s Fund support.

Mathys, H., Peng, Z., Boix, C. A., … Kellis, M. & Tsai, L. H. Single-cell atlas reveals correlates of high cognitive function, dementia, and resilience to Alzheimer’s disease pathology, Cell, September 28, 2023, Read More

Xiong, X., James, B. T., Boix, C. A., Park, Y. P., Galani, K., Victor, M. B., Sun, N., Hou, L., Ho, L. L., Mantero, J., Scannail, A. N., Dileep, V., Dong, W., Mathys, H., Bennett, D. A., Tsai, L. H., & Kellis, M. Epigenomic dissection of Alzheimer’s disease pinpoints causal variants and reveals epigenome erosion, Cell, September 28, 2023, Read More

Dileep, V., Boix, C. A., Mathys, H., Marco, A., Welch, G. M., Meharena, H. S., Loon, A., Jeloka, R., Peng, Z., Bennett, D. A., Kellis, M., & Tsai, L. H. Neuronal DNA double-strand breaks lead to genome structural variations and 3D genome disruption in neurodegeneration, Cell, September 28, 2023, Read More

Sun, N., Victor, M. B., Park, Y. P., Xiong, X., Scannail, A. N., Leary, N., Prosper, S., Viswanathan, S., Luna, X., Boix, C. A., James, B. T., Tanigawa, Y., Galani, K., Mathys, H., Jiang, X., Ng, A. P., Bennett, D. A., Tsai, L. H., & Kellis, M. Human microglial state dynamics in Alzheimer’s disease progression, Cell, September 28, 2023, Read More

Mathys, H., Davila-Velderrain, J., Peng, Z., Gao, F., Mohammadi, S., Young, J. Z., Menon, M., He, L., Abdurrob, F., Jiang, X., Martorell, A. J., Ransohoff, R. M., Hafler, B. P., Bennett, D. A., Kellis, M., & Tsai, L. H. Single-Cell Transcriptomic Analysis of Alzheimer’s Disease, Nature, May 1, 2019, Read More

Blanchard, J. W., Bula, M., Davila-Velderrain, J., Akay, L. A., Zhu, L., Frank, A., Victor, M. B., Bonner, J. M., Mathys, H., Lin, Y. T., Ko, T., Bennett, D. A., Cam, H. P., Kellis, M., & Tsai, L. H. Reconstruction of the human blood–brain barrier in vitro reveals a pathogenic mechanism of APOE4 in pericytes, Nature Medicine, June 8, 2020, Read More

Marco, A., Meharena, H. S., Dileep, V., Raju, R. M., Davila-Velderrain, J., Zhang, A. L., Adaikkan, C., Young, J. Z., Gao, F., Kellis, M., & Tsai, L. H. Mapping the epigenomic and transcriptomic interplay during memory formation and recall in the hippocampal engram ensemble, Nature Neuroscience, October 5, 2020, Read More

Barker, S. J., Raju, R. M., Milman, N. E. P., Wang, J., Davila-Velderrain, J., Gunter-Rahman, F., Parro, C. C., Bozzelli, P. L., Abdurrob, F., Abdelaal, K., Bennett, D. A., Kellis, M., & Tsai, L. H. MEF2 is a key regulator of cognitive potential and confers resilience to neurodegeneration, Science Translational Medicine, November 3, 2021, Read More

Singh, N., Benoit, M. R., Zhou, J., Das, B., Davila-Velderrain, J., Kellis, M., Tsai, L. H., Hu, X., & Yan, R. BACE-1 inhibition facilitates the transition from homeostatic microglia to DAM-1, Science Advances, June 17, 2022, Read More

Garcia, F. J., Sun, N., Lee, H., Godlewski, B., Mathys, H., Galani, K., Zhou, B., Jiang, X., Ng, A. P., Mantero, J., Tsai, L. H., Bennett, D. A., Sahin, M., Kellis, M., & Heiman, M. Single-cell dissection of the human brain vasculature, Nature, February 14, 2022, Read More

Sun, N., Akay, L. A., Murdock, M. H., Park, Y., Galiana-Melendez, F., Bubnys, A., Galani, K., Mathys, H., Jiang, X., Ng, A. P., Bennett, D. A., Tsai, L. H., & Kellis, M. Single-nucleus multiregion transcriptomic analysis of brain vasculature in Alzheimer’s disease., Nature Aging, June 1, 2023, Read More

Blanchard, J. W., Akay, L. A., Davila-Velderrain, J., von Maydell, D., … Kellis, M., Tsai, L. H. APOE4 impairs myelination via cholesterol dysregulation in oligodendrocytes, Nature, November 16, 2022, Read More

Cable, J., Holtzman, D. M., Hyman, B. T., Tansey, M. G., Colonna, M., Kellis, M., Brinton, R. D., Albert, M., Wellington, C. L., Sisodia, S. S., & Tanzi, R. E. Alternatives to Amyloid for Alzheimer’s Disease Therapies-A Symposium Report, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, May 29, 2020, Read More

Welch, G. M., Boix, C. A., Schmauch, E., Davila-Velderrain, J., Victor, M. B., Dileep, V., Bozzelli, P. L., Su, Q., Cheng, J. D., Lee, A., Leary, N. S., Pfenning, A. R., Kellis, M., & Tsai, L. H. Neurons burdened by DNA double-strand breaks incite microglia activation through antiviral-like signaling in neurodegeneration, Science Advances, September 28, 2022, Read More