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Two stars form new constellation

Two renowned scientists—mathematician Michael Zuker and computer scientist Charles “Chip” Lawrence—are leading a new research constellation in bioinformatics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

At Rensselaer, a constellation is a multidisciplinary team of senior faculty, junior faculty, and graduate students led by one or more outstanding stars in a particular research field.

Zuker comes to Rensselaer from Washington University’s School of Medicine in St. Louis where he served as an associate professor of biomedical computing. Zuker, who earned his doctorate in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will begin his work at Rensselaer as professor of mathematical sciences Sept. 1.

Lawrence has joint appointments as research professor of computer science at Rensselaer and as chief of the Biometrics Lab at the Wadsworth Center in Albany. The Wadsworth Center is the public health research laboratory of the New York State Department of Health. Lawrence received a bachelor’s degree in physics from Rensselaer and a doctorate in applied operations research and statistics from Cornell University.

Zuker’s research has focused on the development of algorithms for nucleic acid secondary-structure prediction and for nucleic acid and protein sequence analysis. He has created one of the world’s most popular Web sites for bioinformatics, including a World Wide Web server that predicts structure for RNA and DNA sequences that are entered by users.

Lawrence’s research deals with statistical models in molecular and structural biology. Specifically, he works in the identification and characterization of gene regulatory elements, multiple sequence alignment, and protein structure prediction.

CONTACT: Theresa Bourgeois, (518) 276-2840, bourgt@rpi.edu

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