Bonnie Berger is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is also Professor in the Computation and Biology group at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Professor Berger is also an affiliated member of Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST) and MIT's Computer Science and Systems Biology initiative (CSBi). Her major areas of research have been in applying mathematical techniques to problems in molecular biology. In particular, the focus of her research has been on the following four core problem areas: comparative genomics, protein structural motif recognition and discovery, molecular self-assembly and mis-assembly, and functional genomics.

As a professor at MIT, Professor Berger has co-authored over fifty scholarly research articles and has been invited to present at conferences in fields ranging from randomized algorithms and graph theory to computational molecular biology. Professor Berger has won numerous awards and honors including a National Science Foundation career award, a Radcliffe Bunting Institute Science Scholarship, and the Biophysical Society's Dayoff Award for research among others. In 1999 Professor Berger was named one of Technology Review Magazine's TR100 for being a top young innovator of the twenty-first century. In 2003, she was elected as a Fellow of the ACM.

Professor Berger received her A.B. in computer science magna cum laude from Brandeis University, and was a recipient of the Esther Pine Memorial Prize for academic achievement. She subsequently entered graduate school in computer science at MIT, where she received both her S.M. and Ph.D. in computer science while studying randomized algorithms under the supervision of Professor Silvio Micali. Professor Berger's Ph.D. thesis won the George M. Sprowles Prize for best research contribution to computer science.

After graduating, Professor Berger worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the MIT mathematics department under the sponsorship of Professor Daniel Kleitman as an NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellow, while simultaneously continuing a part-time position as a mathematical consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories to researchers David Johnson and Peter Shor.

Upon completing postdoctoral work, Professor Berger joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor of applied mathematics holding a joint appointment at the Laboratory for Computer Science, now known as the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Professor Berger became the head of the computation and biology group at MIT in 1994. In 1999, Professor Berger was granted tenure. In 2002, she was promoted to full professor.

As a professor at MIT, Professor Berger has advised almost 20 doctoral theses and currently leads a group consisting of ten graduate students and several undergraduate UROPs. Professor Berger's advisees have graduated to significant achievements in many and diverse scientific disciplines. She is a member of the Graduate, MEMP Curriculum, and Governance Committees for the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology as well as the nominating committee of the ACM. In addition to her academic responsibilities, Professor Berger is involved in numerous committees and public service activities at MIT and within the larger scientific community.

Professor Berger's research has been generously supported by grants from the Merck Company, the United States Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Charles E. Reed Faculty Initiative Fund, Arthur D. Little Corporation, and the State Street Bank.

Professor Berger is married and has two children.