PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Wolfgang Huber

Wolfgang Huber is a researcher whose group applies statistical methods and machine learning to biological data, including single-cell analysis. After earning a PhD in theoretical physics and conducting postdoctoral work in cheminformatics and cancer transcriptomics, he joined EMBL. He is a founding member of Bioconductor, coauthored DESeq2 for RNA-sequencing analysis, and wrote a statistics book with Susan Holmes. He became an ISCB Fellow in 2021 and was an ELLIS Fellow at EMBL Heidelberg in 2024. A 2025 study he coauthored tested deep-learning models for gene-perturbation effects, and as of October 2026 he is a Group Leader and Senior Scientist at EMBL.

Badges

Timeline

  1. 1998–2004

    Physics and bioinformatics training

    He earns a PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Freiburg in 1998. He conducts postdoctoral research in cheminformatics at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose in 1998–1999 and in bioinformatics and cancer transcriptomics at DKFZ Heidelberg in 2000–2004.

  2. 2004–2009

    Group leader at EMBL-EBI

    He leads a group at EMBL-EBI from 2004 to 2009. In 2009, he joins EMBL Heidelberg’s new Genome Biology unit.

  3. 2014

    DESeq2 for RNA-seq

    In 2014, he coauthors DESeq2 with Michael Love and Simon Anders for differential analysis of RNA-sequencing count data. The method uses shrinkage estimation for dispersions and fold changes to improve stability and interpretability.

  4. 2019

    A statistics textbook

    He coauthors Modern Statistics for Modern Biology with Susan Holmes in 2019.

  5. 2021

    An ISCB Fellowship

    He becomes a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2021.

  6. 2024

    An ELLIS Fellowship

    He is an ELLIS Fellow at EMBL Heidelberg in 2024.

  7. August 2025

    Benchmarking gene perturbations

    In August 2025, he coauthors a Nature Methods study comparing five foundation models and two other deep-learning models with simple baselines for predicting transcriptome changes after gene perturbations. The study reports that none outperforms the baselines.

  8. Since 2009

    Group leader at EMBL Heidelberg

    Since 2009, he leads the Huber Group at EMBL Heidelberg, and he becomes a Senior Scientist in 2011. As of October 2026, the group applies statistics and machine learning to single-cell and spatial omics. He is a founding member of Bioconductor, an open-source project for biological data analysis.

Career

  1. Since 2004European Molecular Biology LaboratoryGroup Leader, Senior Scientist
  2. 2000–2004Helmholtz Association of German Research CentresPostdoctoral Researcher
  3. 1998–1999IBMPostdoctoral Researcher

Education

  1. 1998University of FreiburgPhD

From the biography.

  1. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes European Molecular Biology Laboratory. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  2. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes IBM. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  3. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes IBM. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.
  4. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes IBM. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Wolfgang Huber – Huber Group @ EMBL huber.embl.de. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Wolfgang Huber, Group Leader and Senior Scientist | People | EMBL embl.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Moderated estimation of fold change and dispersion for RNA-seq data with DESeq2 pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Modern Statistics for Modern Biology web.stanford.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Wolfgang Huber becomes ISCB Fellow | EMBL embl.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. ELLIS Shines Globally: 16 Members Named Highly Cited Researchers 2024 Across 8 Countries ellis.eu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Deep-learning-based gene perturbation effect prediction does not yet outperform simple linear baselines nature.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Huber Group – Quantitative Biology and Statistics embl.org. Checked 21 October 2026.