Aly Azeem Khan (UChicago): Schmidt AI in Science Speaker Series

Abstract: Forthcoming

Bio: Aly Azeem Khan, PhD, Assistant Professor of Family Medicine, University of Chicago. My lab focuses on computational immunology and machine learning, with an emphasis on building predictive models of human immunology. We develop computational methods to understand immune responses across scales by analyzing both the molecular programs within immune cells and their interactions with the tissue microenvironment. We focus on problems that are clinically motivated, computationally tractable, and experimentally testable. A key theme in our research is integrating validated biology, such as lineage phylogeny and tissue context, directly into computational frameworks. This helps ensure our models generate testable and clinically meaningful hypotheses for diagnostics and therapies. As a result, our research has had a broad and significant impact, identifying new problems and methods in immunology that might otherwise have been neglected.

Khan obtained his Ph.D. from Cornell University, where he completed his graduate studies in computational biology in a joint program with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center under Christina Leslie (advisor), Alexander Rudensky and Chris Sander. From 2014 to 2019, he was a member of the research faculty at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC), where he established a research program in computational immunology. In 2019, Khan joined the Department of Pathology at the University of Chicago, and in 2022, also joined the Department of Family Medicine and the College. In 2025, Khan’s lab joined the Biohub to advance efforts in AI and immunology.