Michael Skinnider named a Pew Scholar

Michael Skinnider, an assistant professor in the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and an assistant member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Princeton Branch, has been named one of 21 new Pew Scholars in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The program provides funding to early-career researchers “of outstanding promise” who are pursuing science that advances human health, according to Pew. Skinnider and the other Pew Scholars will receive four years of funding “to explore cutting-edge research uncovering insights into human health and disease,” the announcement said. 

Skinnider uses artificial intelligence to predict and discover metabolites — small and largely unknown molecules in the human body. He and the members of his lab are developing AI technologies to identify these chemical structures and link them to human diseases, including cancer.  

“Scientific discovery is moving at a rapid pace, and now more than ever we need curious and creative researchers leading the charge,” Lee Niswander, a 1995 Pew scholar and chair of the program’s national advisory committee, said in the announcement. “These new biomedical scholars are prepared to meet that challenge, and I look forward to watching their research unfold.”

In 2025, Skinnider received a prestigious Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering. 

With Martin Wühr, associate professor of molecular biology and the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, he recently received an award from the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Transformative Technology Fund for a project that uses machine learning to address the challenge of measuring absolute protein concentration in cells. 

His previous honors include the 2024 Director’s Early Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health and the 2023 Young Explorer Award from the journal Science and the NOMIS foundation, among others. He was also included in the 2020 Forbes 30 under 30 list and the 2024 cohort of the “Talented 12” early career researchers by Chemical & Engineering News.

Skinnider came to Princeton in 2023. He earned his undergraduate degree from McMaster University and his M.D./Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. He also spent time as a visiting Ph.D. student at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.