Jackie Lee “JL” Weissman (they/she) is an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University studying how microbes survive and thrive across diverse environments. She develops new computational tools to infer what microbes are doing and can do from DNA sequences captured directly from the environment (“metagenomes”), aiming to improve the representation of microbially-mediated biogeochemical cycles in global climate models. She also has a special interest in using a combination of comparative genomics, population genetics, and mathematical models to understand the ancient and ongoing battle between microbes and their viruses. She believes all students, with supportive training and mentorship, can become highly-capable computational biologists, and loves to show students how a little coding can go a long way.

Previously, JL served as the inaugural Director for Proposal Development at the City College of New York, where they managed large, interdisciplinary efforts to bring center-level funding to the college and trained early-career researchers in grantmaking. They maintain research affiliations in biology at CCNY and the University of Southern California and have taught at The Cooper Union School of Art. Before returning to New York, they were faculty at Chapman University, where they ran a computational biology research lab, taught, and developed initiatives to improve mentorship at the college level