March 8, 2024 — Carl Kingsford, Herbert A. Simon Professor of Computer Science in the Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department, has been elected as a Fellow of the International Society of Computational Biology (ISCB).

The ISCB notes that Carl has been chosen for this honor because he “is a trailblazer in computational molecular biology, showcasing sustained innovation in scalable algorithmic approaches.”

Carl’s research is focused on developing new, efficient algorithms and AI methods for extracting knowledge from large biological data sets, particularly high-throughput DNA and RNA sequencing data. He has worked on algorithms for accurately quantifying gene expression, identifying compact regions of chromatin, and large-scale sequence search.

Carl’s group continues to push the boundaries of how computer science can drive scientific discovery, including recently developing new pan-genomic analysis algorithms using genome graphs, using reinforcement learning to optimize experimental protocols to drive automated experimentation, and creating new meta-learning techniques for adapting deep neural networks to new tasks with limited data. He is also director of CMU’s Center for Machine Learning and Health (CMLH).

The ISCB Fellows Program, introduced in 2009, is a prestigious recognition within the field of computational biology and honors members that have distinguished themselves through outstanding contributions to the field, provided to only ½ of a percent of the previous year’s ISCB membership. The new Fellows will be introduced during this year’s ISMB conference in July 2024.

For more information on this year’s fellows, visit ISCB’s website.