Lior Pachter

"Computational biology is the art of developing and applying computational methods to answer questions in biology, such as studying how proteins fold, identifying genes that are associated with diseases, or inferring human population histories from genetic data."

"I have interests in both the development of computational methods and in answering specific biology questions, primarily related to the function of RNA, a molecule central to the function of cells."

"While genome sequencing has obviously been useful in revealing the sequences that are involved in coding various aspects of the molecular biology of the cell, it has had a secondary impact that is less obvious at first glance."

"The low cost and high throughput (the ability to process large volumes of material) of genome sequencing allowed for a more "big-data" approach to biology, so that experiments that previously could only be applied to individual genes could suddenly be applied in parallel to all of the genes in the genome."

"A result of the scale of these new experiments is the emergence of very large data sets in biology whose interpretation demands the application of state-of-the-art computer science methods."

"The problems require interdisciplinary dexterity and involve not only management of large data sets but also the development of novel abstract frameworks for understanding their structure."