Our team
Dr. Matt Pennell
Associate Professor of Computational Biology
mpennell [at] cornell.edu
404D Atkinson Hall
350 Tower Rd. Ithaca, NY
Dr. Matt Pennell is an Associate Professor of Computational Biology at Cornell University. He grew up in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada. He first became fascinated by evolutionary biology while studying at Simon Fraser University. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from the University of Idaho, where he worked under the supervision of Dr. Luke Harmon. He then moved to the University of British Columbia to be a Izaak Killam/NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow, working with Dr. Sally Otto, and subsequently, a faculty member in the Department of Zoology from 2016-2022. He was an Associate Professor in the Departments of Quantitative and Computational Biology and Biological Sciences at the University of Southern California from 2022-2024. His lab uses phylogenetic trees to understand how evolutionary, ecological, epidemiological, and immunological processes shape patterns of diversity. To study this, his lab develops and studies mathematical/statistical/computational methods, derives theoretical models, and conducts large-scale empirical analyses. In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Theodosius Dobzhansky Prize from the Society for the Study of Evolution (2019), the Jasper Loftus-Hills Young Investigator Prize from the American Society of Naturalists (2017), and a Canada Research Chair from the Government of Canada (2016, 2021).
current lab Members
Dr. Josh Schraiber
Research Scientist
schraibe [at] usc.edu
Katalin Voss
CB Ph.D. student
kav67 [at] cornell.edu
Yixin Zhu
CB Ph.D. Student
yz3398 [at] cornell.edu
Mark Kim
CB Ph.D. Student
mk2687 [at] Cornell.edu
Qifan Wang
CB Ph.D. Student
qw64 [at] cornell.edu
Rituparna Banerjee
Bioinf. Ph.D. Student (UBC)
rb2411 [at] student.ubc.ca
Dr. Alex Cope
Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow
alexander.cope [at] vanderbilt.edu
Dr. Kyle David
NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
kyle.t.david [at] vanderbilt.edu
lab alumni
Former graduate students:
- Barbara Neto-Bradley, Cambridge University
- Dr. Francisco Henao-Diaz, University of California, Berkeley
- Dr. Katrina Kaur, Notch Therapeutics
- Fiel Dimayacyac, Hospital for Sick Children
- Mauro Sugawara
Former postdoctoral fellows:
- Dr. Daohan (“Rex”) Jiang, Postdoctoral Researcher, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
- Dr. Chris Muir, Asst. Prof. University of Wisconsin
- Dr. Ailene MacPherson, Asst. Prof. Simon Fraser University
join the lab
We do not have any specific openings for postdoctoral fellows but as our lab is still partially funded by startup funds, we have some flexibility to consider hires if there is an exceptional fit. If you are interested in joining our lab as a postdoctoral fellow, please contact Dr. Pennell directly.
Most of the students in the lab will be enrolled in the Computational Biology Ph.D. program at Cornell University.
The next admission deadline is December 2025. Interested students may, but do not need to, contact me prior to submitting an application. Students are admitted by the program and do not need to have decided on a lab prior to applying; there are many other excellent research groups affiliated with Computational Biology Graduate Field and I would advise interested students to check these groups out as well.
We welcome undergraduate students (and high school students) interested in joining a research lab. Many, if not most, of the ongoing projects in the lab could use additional researchers; Dr. Pennell is also interested in supervising independent research projects if the student is exceptionally driven and if there is a good match between their interests and the interests of the rest of the lab. (Previously, we’ve even had undergraduate researchers publish their independent projects in peer reviewed scientific journals.)
Our lab is exclusively a ‘dry lab’, meaning that all our work is computational. Undergraduates interested in conducting research in our group need to have a serious interest in programming. We welcome folks with minimal programming backgrounds – we are happy to help you learn! – but you need to be motivated to learn. Please reach out to Dr. Pennell if you are interested.
