Justin Reese
Computer Research Scientist
Research Interests
Dr. Justin Reese is a Research Scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His research seeks to understand how complex biological systems give rise to health and disease, and how diverse data can be harnessed to accelerate biological discovery. He is particularly interested in questions that bridge biology and biomedicine, with an emphasis on translating biological knowledge into tools that improve human health.
He develops and applies computational approaches that include artificial intelligence, machine learning, knowledge graphs, and ontologies. His work spans molecular, clinical, and environmental biosciences. He leads and co-leads multi-institutional collaborations that combine structured biological knowledge with modern AI systems to derive insights from complex biological datasets. His projects include constructing large-scale knowledge graphs and applying graph machine learning algorithms to them, using large language models to extract and organize information from scientific literature and clinical data, and developing AI systems that assist scientists in discovery, including applications such as improving rare disease diagnosis, using AI to accelerate research in neurodegenerative diseases, and building tools to suggest better candidates for drug repurposing.
Programs & Initiatives
- C-BRAIN – Consortium for Biomedical Research & AI in Neurodegeneration Research
- Monarch Initiative / Phenomics First
- Exomiser
- Bridge2AI
Programs & Initiatives
Recent Publications
Related News
Machine Learning Tackles Long COVID
A new machine learning tool developed by a team of researchers led by Justin Reese of Berkeley Lab and Peter Robinson of Jackson Lab analyzes electronic health records to find symptoms in common between people who have been diagnosed with long COVID and to define subtypes of the condition.
Metformin May Mitigate More Severe COVID-19 Outcomes in Patients with Prediabetes, PCOS
An international team led by Justin Reese, a research scientist in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology (EGSB) Division, analyzed electronic health record data aggregated in the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) Data Enclave to assess whether metformin is associated with reduced COVID-19 severity in people with prediabetes or polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), two common conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19 presentation.
