Olivier develops causal machine learning methods and software to uncover the mechanisms underlying human diseases. He trained in machine learning (MSc, École Centrale de Lyon, 2015) and spent several years as a machine learning scientist in industry, including helping establish the Microbiome Studio spin-off. He then returned to academia to address a gap he kept running into: machine learning systems are powerful pattern-recognition engines, but they lack a principled way to reason about intervention and cause. His PhD sat at the interface of causal inference and functional genetics. It produced TarGene, a Targeted Learning framework for estimating the effects of genetic variants, including higher-order interactions, on complex traits at biobank scale. Olivier joined EBI in September 2026, where he aims to identify biological signatures derived from human data that predict the outcome of randomized control trials. Olivier is co-supervised by Sarah Teichmann (GSK, Cambridge Stem Cell Institute).
Search for Olivier Labayle's papers on the Publications page