welcome!
My name is Laura, and I am a biologist and ML researcher developing methods for real-time infectious disease detection, pandemic prevention, biosecurity, and novel virus discovery. I hold both the Eric and Wendy Schmidt and FutureHouse AI-for-Science Postdoctoral Fellowships and work with Prof. Pardis Sabeti at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where I co-lead the AI branch of the $100 million MacArthur-award Sentinel Project.
During my PhD at Caltech, I developed gget, a widely adopted open-source toolkit for genomic and proteomic analysis with over 300k downloads worldwide, and created algorithms to discover hidden viral sequences in RNA sequencing data (Nature Biotechnology, 2025). My primary interests lie in understanding the role of viruses in human health and disease, as well as building machine learning models to assist high-stakes clinical triage in West Africa.
Outside of the lab, I enjoy any outdoor activity, especially those involving water. I am a certified lifeguard and, immediately after arriving in Boston, I got my sailing license at the MIT Sailing Club.