Stefano Monti, PhD

Professor, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine

Biography

Stefano Monti is a Computational Biologist and joined the BU faculty in January 2011 in the section of Computational Biomedicine, with joint appointments in the Biostatistics Department and the Bioinformatics program. Monti received his Ph.D. in Intelligent Systems and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Pittsburgh, and completed his training with a post-doctoral fellowship at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon. His doctoral and post-doctoral research focused on the development of machine learning and knowledge discovery methodologies, with a particular emphasis on probabilistic reasoning and Bayesian approaches to modeling biomedical data. Since 2001, he has worked in the field of Cancer Genomics, first as a Research Scientist at the Whitehead Institute’s Center for Genome Research, and later as a Computational Biologist in the Cancer Program at the Broad Institute.

Dr. Monti's laboratory integrates systems biology, machine learning, and bioinformatics approaches to investigate the molecular drivers of human disease, with the goals of advancing prevention and care. This multidisciplinary effort relies on the development of novel computational methodologies, and on the design of experiments based on the generation and integrative analysis of high-throughput multi-omics data, with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic targets and developing accurate diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. Specific areas of research include the study of the molecular mechanisms of tumor initiation and progression and of the role played in it by environmental exposure, as well as the study of the biological factors contributing to healthy aging and extreme longevity.

Publications

  • Published 8/26/2025

    Ennis CS, Seen M, Chen A, Kang H, Ilinski A, Mahdaviani K, Ko NY, Monti S, Denis GV. Plasma exosomes from individuals with type 2 diabetes drive breast cancer aggression in patient-derived organoids. Commun Biol. 2025 Aug 26; 8(1):1276. PMID: 40858992.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 7/18/2025

    Li M, Song Z, Reed E, Karagiannis TT, Andersen S, Brent M, Mateusiak C, Acharya S, Jung WS, Liao S, Wojczynski MK, Feitosa MF, O'Connell JR, Montasser ME, Thorpe RJ, Arbeev K, Milman S, Tai A, Perls TT, Sebastiani P, Monti S. Whole blood transcriptional signatures of age and survival identified in Long Life Family and Integrative Longevity Omics Studies. bioRxiv. 2025 Jul 18. PMID: 40791342.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 7/9/2025

    Llévenes P, Chen A, Lawton M, Rondón-Ortiz AN, Qiu Y, Seen M, Monti S, Denis GV. Plasma exosomes in insulin resistant obesity exacerbate progression of triple negative breast cancer. BMC Cancer. 2025 Jul 09; 25(1):1089. PMID: 40629272.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 7/7/2025

    Li W, Nishino M, Reed E, Akshinthala D, Pasha HA, Anderson ES, Huang L, Hebestreit H, Monti S, Gomez ED, Jalisi SM, Muthuswamy SK. Head and neck tumor organoid grown under simplified media conditions model tumor biology and chemoradiation responses. Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 07; 15(1):24221. PMID: 40624315.

    Read at: PubMed

  • Published 7/3/2025

    Trepicchio C, Rauner G, Traugh N, Wang R, Parrish M, Fein DEC, Mal Y, Gupta PB, Monti S, Kuperwasser C. DDR1 regulates RUNX1-CBFß to control breast stem cell differentiation. Stem Cell Reports. 2025 Aug 12; 20(8):102576. PMID: 40614729.

    Read at: PubMed

Other Positions

  • Associate Professor, Biostatistics
    Boston University School of Public Health
  • Member, BU-BMC Cancer Center
    Boston University
  • Member, Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research
    Boston University
  • Member, Bioinformatics Graduate Program
    Boston University
  • Member, Genome Science Institute
    Boston University
  • Graduate Faculty (Primary Mentor of Grad Students)
    Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, Graduate Medical Sciences

Education

  • University of Pittsburgh, PhD
  • University of Pittsburgh, MS
  • University of Houston, MS
  • Università degli Studi di Udine, BS