Michael Robben is a promising young investigator pushing computational methods for use in advancing knowledge in immunology and animal science. Michael completed his undergraduate education at Salisbury University on the eastern shore of Maryland where he conducted undergraduate research in C. elegans and cancer bioinformatics. After a successful internship in the REU program at South Dakota State University, he went on to complete his Ph.D. in the midst of the Covid pandemic. Michael served as a shared postdoc in a computational biology lab and a cancer immunology lab at the University of Texas at Arlington where he published heavily in using single cell RNA-seq and machine learning for spatial research. Michael has been a life-long advocate for science education, working as a teaching assistant since his freshman year and teaching biology in outreach programs directed at middle and elementary students throughout Wicomico county. He also cares deeply for conservation of natural resources, working with and independent of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation to reduce pollution in the chesapeake bay. Michael’s interest in biology stretches across disciplines from marine science to cancer biology which is reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of his work. He believes that good ideas comes from people of different backgrounds who see problems in different ways and encourages collaborative science within his lab.