Vamsi Mootha is a Professor of Systems Biology and of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. His laboratory is based in the Department of Molecular Biology and Center for Human Genetic Research at Massachusetts General Hospital and at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. He is board certified in internal medicine and specializes in rare mitochondrial diseases. His laboratory uses a blend of genomics, computation, and biochemical physiology to systematically study mitochondrial biology.

Dr. Mootha received his B.S. (with honors, with distinction) in Mathematical and Computational Science at Stanford University. He then received his M.D. (cum laude) from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, where his thesis research focused on mitochondrial energetics. Following an internship and residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he pursued postdoctoral training in Eric Lander’s laboratory at the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research.

His research group consists of clinicians, computer scientists, and biologists, who work collaboratively to elucidate the network properties of mitochondria, and how these properties go awry in human disease. His work has led to the discovery of ten Mendelian mitochondrial disease genes, as well as to the discovery that mitochondrial dysfunction is associated with the common form of type 2 diabetes mellitus. His work has also led to the development of generic, computational strategies that have now been applied successfully to other human diseases.

Dr. Mootha has received a number of honors, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Judson Daland Prize of the American Philosophical Society.