Carsten Marr is considered a pioneer in AI-driven methods to improve the diagnosis and treatment of hematological diseases. “I want to bring AI methods closer to the patient and translate them into clinical application,” says Marr. In addition, he aims to develop novel cell therapy approaches together with clinically oriented research colleagues at LMU University Hospital. “The close collaboration between Helmholtz Munich and LMU University Hospital creates ideal conditions to advance translational research,” says Prof. Dr. Dr. Michael von Bergwelt, Director of the Department of Medicine III.
Scientific Career
After studying theoretical physics at the Technical University of Munich and the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics, Carsten Marr turned his focus to theoretical biology. His doctoral thesis on the architecture of biological networks, completed at TU Darmstadt, received the university’s award for best dissertation of the year. Research stays took him to Munich, Bremen, and Edinburgh, among others. In 2013, he founded his own research group at Helmholtz Munich and later became Deputy Director of the Institute of Computational Biology.
Through interdisciplinary projects, Marr developed groundbreaking AI methods for biomedical applications - for example, to predict stem cell decisions or to detect leukemia in blood smears. For his work in single-cell analysis, he has received numerous awards, including an ERC Consolidator Grant.
