Contact Information

Here's some pointers on how to most efficiently contact me, in both personal and professional contexts. Basically, I tend to strongly prefer email over unscheduled phone calls or paper mail. (I do like scheduled phone calls and meetings, however!) Unfortunately, I am sometimes a bit slow in responding to all the professional correspondence that I get. In the later case, if it's urgent, I'd try to contact me through my assistant or by using the pleasepagemark email address.

Email

Mark.GersteinYale.edu  &  markGerstein.info

These are my normal emails for professional and personal contexts. Some points on using them:

• My spam whitelist obviously does not contain people who are trying to reach me for the first time. Consequently, one problem I increasingly have is that initial contact emails end up in my spam pile. To prevent this, put *cyan* in the subject line of the message. I have my filters set up to try to not flag such messages as spam.
• Some don'ts: It is only necessary to send email to one of the two above addresses as eventually they both go to the same place. Do not use markgersteins.net, mbgpobox.com, or mbgcsb.yale.edu (which are defunct). Finally, please do not put either of my two main addresses in web forms; use my assistant addresses below.
• I tend to refrain from sending highly confidential information (such as passwords and social security numbers) over email. (See more here.)
• For big messages (>1Mb), I prefer if you send a link to a file rather than a huge attachment. If you try sending me a big message and it gets bounced, you might try the Yale ITS transfer service.
• Unfortunately, it is rather common for me to get overwhelmed with professional emails. I know I am sometimes slow in responding, so if you want to reach me quickly, see below.

pleasepagemarkyahoo.com

If you need to reach me rapidly try this, send an email to this address putting the *blue* in the subject line of the message. Use this sparingly. It goes to my cell phone (and to my normal email) and creates a buzz. It is best to keep the message very short and confined to the subject line of the message, viz: Subject: *blue* -- trying to contact you about sending you check for $10M.

adminasstbioinfo.mbb.yale.edu  &  aambgbioinfo.mbb.yale.edu

These emails go to my assistant. The 2nd one goes to both me and my assistant. (However, my assistant will probably read it first.) If you address your matter to my assistant, she can make sure that I know about urgent professional matters in a timely fashion. However, my assistant does not handle my schedule so write to me directly about scheduling appointments. Also, use these addresses to put in web forms -- e.g. for letters of reference.

Phone & Fax

203 432 6105 — You can call my office phone (which sometimes forwards to my cell). Try to make sure your caller ID shows through (with *82 if necessary) as I don't tend to pick up calls missing explicit identification. It is often hard to get me by phone at random times. Furthermore, leaving a voicemail at this number is not that effective. It is more effective in a professional context to go through my assistant (see below).

203 432 8189 — This is my assistant's number. It is usually best to reach her by phone before trying me in a professional context. If you want to leave a voicemail for me, it is more effective to leave it for her, asking her to relay it to me.

360 838 7861 — This is my efax number. (Optimum if you email me to give me a heads up that you are sending a fax.)

mark.gerstein — username for skype.

Paper Mail & Physical Location

I much prefer email to paper mail, so this will get a slow response. Here is my correct paper mail address:
Mark Gerstein, PO Box 208114 MBB, Yale University New Haven, CT 06520 USA.

If you want to meet in person (which I do like!), my office location is here. You sometimes need authorization to get in the building after 6 PM. If so, arrange to call me, so I can come down to meet you. Also, please make sure you announce yourself at my office.

I don't post my home address on the web, but if you're interested, it's (unfortunately) fairly trivial to get it from Google and my home phone number (if you know the latter).

Even More Information...