Sumaiya Iqbal, Ph.D.
Senior Group Leader, Bioinformatics and Machine Learning
Sumaiya Iqbal is a senior group leader in the Ladders to Cures (L2C) Accelerator at the Ó³»´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard — an initiative to accelerate advances towards treatments and cures for patients with rare genetic diseases. She is also an associate member of the Cancer Data Sciences Program at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC). She developed the , a human proteome-wide discovery platform for linking genetic screening outputs to protein sequences and structures.
Iqbal is a computer scientist by training but a life science researcher by determination. At the Ó³»´«Ã½, she leads the bioinformatics and machine learning group aimed at connecting genomics to proteins and mechanisms using data sciences, statistics, and machine learning (ML)/AI. The focus of the is the following: building bioinformatics resources to bridge the gap across complex multi-omics data types; developing methods to unveil the molecular effect of genetic/synthetic mutations on protein structure-function relationships; and building ML/AI-driven innovative tools for new target and small-molecule hit discovery. Iqbal lab works across all disease areas, with a special focus on rare genetic diseases and pediatric cancer.
Iqbal started her lab at the Ó³»´«Ã½ in 2023, after two years as a postdoc at the of MGH, Harvard Medical School, and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, and three years as a research scientist at the Center for Development of Therapeutics at the Ó³»´«Ã½. Iqbal has earned multiple awards, including the Ó³»´«Ã½ SPARC award, the Merkin Institute award for Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and the award. She is also a recipient of the Ó³»´«Ã½ Staff Scientists Distinction Award in Scientific Collaboration and serves as the chair for the Ó³»´«Ã½ Machine Learning for Drug Discovery symposium.
Iqbal holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the LSU New Orleans, and a M.Sc. and B.Sc. in computer science from the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
Contact Sumaiya Iqbal via email at sumaiya@broadinstitute.org.
February 2026
