Dr. Zachary DeBruine

Zachary DeBruine

Contact Information

E-mail Address: [email protected]

Phone Number: (616) 331-7839


Research Interests

My lab is interested in building multimodal machine learning models, foundation models of genomics data, and architecting LLM solutions for interpreting genomics data through natural language.

Professional Activities

University R&D committee member,
Founder/CEO of Herd Social, a company building the social network for the rare disease community.


Personal Interests

Spending time outdoors with my wife and three kids (ages 8, 5, and 2), playing piano and organ, and winemaking.

Teaching Interests

Machine learning, with a special focus on generative deep learning models and applied AI/ML.


Recent Publications


Research with Students

We have over 10 students working on three funded research projects this year. Each team meets weekly, with 1:1s as needed. We collaborate to build products, write manuscripts, and solve real-world problems. Good mix of undergraduate and graduate students with diverse skillsets. You are welcome to chat about opportunities!


Grants and Fellowships

  • Single-cell Data Insights Grant, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
  • National Institutes of Health Office of the Director, Transformative R01 subaward from Van Andel Institute
  • Presidential Innovation Fellowship, GVSU

Updated Research Opportunities for Students

Please email me anytime to schedule a chat about research! We have projects ranging from deep learning with Pytorch on our HPC to building LLM agents and web development.



Page last modified October 15, 2024