!
I'm Yazdan Zinati

I'm a Biomedical Life Sciences PhD student in the Systems Biology department at Columbia University, where I try to solve problems in computational biology.

Before this, I completed an MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering in Dr. Amin Emad's lab, focusing on causal and counterfactual regulatory-guided approaches to single-cell and spatial transcriptomics using deep learning. Check out my thesis if you want the full story.

I studied Honours BEng in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Software Engineering at McGill University, and along the way, did several software engineering internships. After briefly dabbling in industry as a data scientist in the Office of the CTO at EY, I eventually found my way back to academia.

If you fancy a chat, feel free to drop me a line at