Peter Kharchenko will take up his faculty position at IMBA on 1 October 2026. He already started recruiting students through the Vienna BioCenter PhD Program and its autumn 2026 call, and will also recruit postdoctoral researchers. Kharchenko’s group will develop and apply computational and statistical approaches for the analysis of complex biological data, significantly strengthening bioinformatics at the institute.
Before joining IMBA, Kharchenko led a research group at the Altos Labs San Diego Institute of Science. He previously held a faculty position in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. Kharchenko’s research has focused on methods for analyzing high-throughput genomic assays, including transcriptional, epigenetic and genetic data. He is a leading figure in computational biology, single-cell genomics and epigenetics, with particular relevance to the growing use of multi-omics and spatially resolved datasets in biomedical research.
Kharchenko's group will develop new computational approaches to study basic questions in gene regulation and tissue dynamics, and to infer molecular basis of disease from patient samples. Peter Kharchenko has a strong track record of close interaction with experimental research groups.
“We are all excited to have recruit this eminent scientist to our community at IMBA,” says IMBA Scientific Director Elly Tanaka. “Peter’s contributions will be a game-changer for IMBA’s scientific progress in future.”
About Peter Kharchenko
Peter Kharchenko received his PhD in Biophysics from Harvard University, where he studied gene regulation and metabolic networks under the supervision of George Church. He subsequently completed postdoctoral training in computational biology and genomics with Peter Park at Harvard Medical School. His research combines statistical methodology, computational tool development and the analysis of genomic, single-cell and spatial data.
Further reading
Technology Platform of Peter Kharchenko (coming soon)