Dina Zielinski is a molecular and computational biologist. Most of her research has been in human genetics and genomics, from decoding mutations in cancer and rare diseases to encoding digital data in DNA. She studied biology and French at NYU where she received her bachelor’s degree. Dina started her career as a molecular biologist at the Whitehead Institute/MIT where she worked on bridging molecular and computational strategies in human genetics. Later, she moved to the New York Genome Center/Columbia University where she was inspired to focus on bioinformatics to bring biological data to life. While at the Institut Curie, she completed her MSc in bioinformatics at Université Paris Cité, followed by a joint PhD in genomics and biomedical informatics through Sorbonne Université and Harvard Medical School. She then worked as a senior scientist at Inserm (French National Institute of Health and Medical Research) where she developed predictive models using biomedical data to improve disease diagnostics. She currently leads computational biology R&D at WhiteLab Genomics, a techbio company that aims to mitigate risks and accelerate the development of gene and cell therapies.

Dina is an avid science communicator, TEDx and keynote speaker. Her experience as both a biomedical scientist and early onset breast cancer patient has profoundly shaped her understanding of human health and disease. She was selected as a 2020 National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow and in 2022 as an ambassador for the BOLD COMMUNITY, a global initiative sponsored by the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber. She is also an ambassador for Geneticancer and volunteer for the Women's Cancer Institute. Her work has been profiled by The Atlantic, BBC, Forbes, NPR, The Pathologist, The Scientist, STAT, The Wall Street Journal, and WIRED, and her TEDxVienna talk on DNA Storage, published on TED.com, has received more than 2 million views.