Schwartz elected to ISCB Board of Directors, passes torch to new Director of Computational Biology Ph.D Program

Dr. Russell S. Schwartz, Professor of Biological Sciences and Computational Biology, has recently been elected to the Board of Directors for the International Society for Computational Biology, the leading professional society for computational biology and bioinformatics.  His election reflects his very significant contributions to research and education in the field.   He is well known for his pioneering work on tumor phylogeny, as well as on simulation of macromolecular assembly.

Dr. Schwartz has been Director of the Carnegie Mellon-University of Pittsburgh Ph.D program in Computational Biology (CPCB) since 2009.  Since its creation, this program has already seen over 50 graduates begin successful careers, both in academia and industry.  Dr. Schwartz played an important role in the creation of the CPCB, as well as the Lane Center for Computational Biology (which later became the Computational Biology Department).

During his time as director, enrollment in the program has steadily increased.  This year, the program is matriculating 12 new students, bringing the number of current Ph.D students to 47.  At the CPCB retreat this weekend, Dr. Schwartz stepped down as the Director and Dr. Ziv Bar-Joseph took his place.   He will work closely with Dr. James Faeder from the University of Pittsburgh, the other current CPCB director.

Dr. Bar-Joseph is Professor of Computational Biology and Machine Learning and has been a member of the Carnegie Mellon University faculty since 2003.  Like Dr. Schwartz, he was a founding member of the faculty of CPCB and the Lane Center.  In 2012, he received the Overton Prize, an award presented by ISCB for outstanding accomplishments in the early to mid-stage of a career.  Dr. Bar-Joseph is co-Director of the Big Data For Better Health project, a major collaboration between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh supported by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Universal Research Enhancement program.

We thank Dr. Schwartz for his outstanding service to computational biology at Carnegie Mellon and in Pittsburgh!