Joerg Menche

Recent advances in high-throughput technologies have created exciting new opportunities for systematically investigating the molecular mechanisms underlying human disease. CeMM researchers employ a broad range of powerful post-genomic technologies, including next-generation sequencing of genomes, epigenomes, and transcriptomes, as well as high-throughput proteomics and chemical screening. Our group applies diverse computational biology approaches to help understand and interpret the large-scale molecular datasets derived from these technologies.

A particular focus is the application of tools and concepts from network theory to elucidate the complex machinery of interacting biomolecules that constitutes the basis of (patho-)physiological states. The overarching goal of the emerging field of network medicine is to (i) provide conceptual insights into the network signatures that characterize disease states and to (ii) translate these insights into novel bioinformatics tools for the analysis of molecular data. These tools address a broad range of important challenges in systems biology, from disease gene identification to tumor classification and drug discovery.

Jörg Menche studied physics in Leipzig, Recife, and Berlin. During his PhD at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, he specialized in network theory. He then moved to Boston to work as a postdoctoral fellow at Northeastern University and at the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, where he applied network theory to elucidate the complex machinery of interacting molecules that constitutes the basis of (patho)physiological states. Menche joined CeMM as principal investigator in 2015, where he built his group supported by a Vienna Research Groups for Young Investigators career integration grant from the Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF). In 2020, his group moved to the University of Vienna, where he now holds a professorship with a dual appointment at the Mathematics Department and the Max Perutz Labs. His group is currently pursuing three major lines of research: (i) trying to identify basic principles that govern how perturbations of biological systems influence each other, (ii) developing novel network-based methods for the integration and analysis of large and diverse biomedical data, in particular using Virtual Reality tools, and (iii) the application of network-based approaches to rare genetic diseases, with the overall goal of developing a truly personalized framework to help individual patients with severe hereditary diseases.