Howdy, I'm Courtney.
I work on predictive modeling of biological sequences with applications in enzyme design, therapeutics, and variant effect prediction. I have a massive interest in determining if models are useful and/or building models that address real biological needs.
I am currently visiting at DeepMind with the Predictive Genomics Team. Previously I did my PhD with Harvard Systems Synthetic Biology under Debora Marks (2026). B.S. in Computer Science and Genetics from Clemson University (2019).
Outside of daily duties, I dabble in music to relax, bike to get around town, sew to use my hands, run to use my feet, and spend time with my partner and our two beloved felines, to fill my heart.
what's new
- Jan 2026 PhD defended! Thesis: Generative Evolutionary Models for Variant Effect Prediction, Harvard University
- December 2025 LOL-EVE published in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research from MLCB!
- November 2025 popEVE published in Nature Genetics
- Oct 2025 Starting as Research Engineer at Google DeepMind, London — 9 month visit to the Genomics Team within the Science Unit
- Sep 2025 Spotlight Talk at MLCB 2025: Learning a language model across promoter evolutionary sequences for variant effect prediction
- Jul 2025 Best Paper Award at ICML GenBio Workshop for LOL-EVE! Also gave a spotlight talk at the workshop
- Jun 2025 Talk at Cambridge Wellcome Trust AIxBio on promoter variant effect prediction
- Spring 2025 TF for Marinka Zitnik’s AI in Biomedicine course at HMS; gave tutorial on Protein Language Models for Clinical Variant Effect Prediction
- Nov 2024 Primer talk at Broad Medical Population and Genomics Group: Can we computationally predict variant effects so we can do fewer experiments???
- Jun 2024 Talk at Broad MPG: Learning a language model across promoter evolutionary sequences for variant effect prediction
- Apr 2024 Guest lecture at MIT for Machine Learning for Healthcare with Sarah Gurev: Methods for Genomics in Medicine
- 2023 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (GRFP) recipient
- Aug 2021 Starting PhD at Harvard in the SSQB (Systems, Synthetic, and Quantitative Biology) program
- Aug 2020 Starting as Bioinformatics Engineer at CRISPR Therapeutics, Boston
- Aug 2019 Starting as Bioinformatics Engineer at Zymergen, Emeryville CA