Christopher Woelk

Christopher Woelk, PhD, is currently the head of the Translational Genomics group at Verge Genomics and is responsible for identifying new targets using omics data generated from human tissue samples.  Previously, he worked as the Head of Systems Biology at Merck’s Exploratory Science Center in Cambridge (US) and as a Professor of Genomics and Bioinformatics at the University of Southampton (UK).  Christopher has over 20 years of experience managing cross-disciplinary teams focused on reverse translation from clinical data for target and biomarker identification across a range of indications (infectious disease, oncology, respiratory disease and neurological disorders).  He is an author on over 80 peer-reviewed journal publications and an inventor on a number of patents.  With respect to machine learning, his research has used supervised methods to identify biomarkers for pathogenic infections and immune recovery, as well as for discovering novel targets for polygenic diseases and antigens for subunit vaccines.