Lazar is an Assistant Professor a the University of Alberta, cross-appointed in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Department of Biochemistry, while also serving as an Adjunct Professor in Computing Science.
Prior to his current roles, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Eric & Wendy Schmidt Center of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He earned his PhD from the University of Toronto in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. During his doctoral studies, Lazar was a graduate research student at the Vector Institute and a member of the Probabilistic and Statistical Inference Group, where he was supervised by Brendan Frey and co-supervised by Bo Wang.
His professional background also includes several research internships at leading institutions and biotech companies, including:
Recursion Pharmaceuticals / Valence Labs
Deep Genomics
Mila – Quebec AI Institute
My research focuses on developing machine learning methods for understanding and modelling natural (physical) systems from data, with a particular focus on cellular and molecular biology. My interests include generative modelling (flows and diffusion), deep learning, causality, single-cell biology, and recently, proteins & molecules.
Leading the Atanackovic Lab
Lazar leads the Atanackovic Lab at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on developing sophisticated machine learning methods to understand and model natural physical systems through data, with a primary emphasis on cellular and molecular biology.
His research spans machine learning, generative modeling, causality, systems biology, single-cell biology, and protein & molecule design. He combines theoretical advances with practical applications to push the boundaries of what’s possible in computational biology and AI.
