Chris Bakal is the Professor of Cancer Morphodynamics at the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and CEO and Co-Founder of Sentinal4D. His career has focused on a simple but powerful idea: that cell shape and dynamics contain information about a patient's health, disease, and response to therapy.
At Harvard Medical School, he developed some of the first AI approaches for inferring cell signalling states from living cells. Since establishing his ICR lab in 2009, he has pioneered imaging and computational methods to study cancer cells in 3D and over time. Importantly, Chris' research is built on the belief that patients are not averages, a principle that extends to building AI models that predict the health of diverse populations in the UK, including patients who are essentially invisible to most AI now. This work has made him one of cell biology's most influential thinkers on how best to use AI in research and medicine.
Outside the lab, Chris represents the LGBTQ+ club 'Out to Swim' in competitions, and is a former world-ranked downhill ski racer