Caroline Uhler’s research blends machine learning and statistics with biology to better understand gene regulation, health, and disease. Despite this lofty mission, Uhler remains dedicated to her original career passion: teaching. “The students at MIT are amazing,” says Uhler. “That’s what makes it so fun to work here.” Uhler recently received tenure in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. She is also an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a researcher at the MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems. Growing up along Lake Zurich in Switzerland, Uhler knew early on she wanted to teach. After high school, she spent a year gaining classroom experience — and didn’t discriminate by subject. “I taught Latin, German, math, and biology,” she says. But by year’s end, she found herself enjoying teaching math and biology best. So she enrolled at ETH Zurich to study those subjects and earn a master’s of education that would allow her to become a full-time high school teacher.
