Biographical sketches of authors

Jason T. L. Wang   Department of Computer and Information Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology, University Heights, Newark, New Jersey 07102 (jason@cis.njit.edu). Dr. Wang received the B.S. degree in mathematics from National Taiwan University. He received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, in 1991. He is a full professor in the Computer and Information Science Department at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and director of the university's Data and Knowledge Engineering Laboratory. Dr. Wang's research interests include data mining and databases, pattern recognition, bioinformatics, and Web computing. He has published more than 100 technical articles in conference proceedings, journals, and books. He is an editor and author of the book Pattern Discovery in Biomolecular Data: Tools, Techniques, and Applications, published in 1999 by Oxford University Press. He is also program cochair for 2001 of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology, Genome Information Systems and Technology, held at Duke University.

Qicheng Ma   Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Summit, New Jersey 07901 (qicheng.ma@pharma.novartis.com). Dr. Ma received the B.S. degree in computer science and engineering from Beijing University of Aerospace and Aeronautics, the M.S. degree in computer science from Beijing Research Institute of Computer Application and Simulation Technology, and the Ph.D. degree in computer and information science from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is currently working in the Life Science Informatics Unit, Department of Functional Genomics, Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, as a senior scientist. His research interests are bioinformatics and data mining, particularly in applying machine learning algorithms to solving biological problems. He is currently working on classification and clustering of genomes across evolution.

Dennis Shasha   Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 251 Mercer Street, New York, New York 10012 (shasha@cs.nyu.edu). Dr. Shasha is a professor at NYU's Courant Institute where he does research on biological pattern discovery, combinatorial pattern matching on trees and graphs, software support for the exploration of unfamiliar databases, database tuning, and database design for time series. After graduating from Yale in 1977, he worked for IBM designing circuits and microcode for the 3090 processor. He completed his Ph.D. degree at Harvard in 1984 under thesis advisor Nat Goodman. He has written a professional reference book (Database Tuning: A Principled Approach, published in 1992 by Prentice Hall), two books about a mathematical detective named Dr. Ecco (The Puzzling Adventures of Dr. Ecco, published in 1988 by W. H. Freeman and republished in 1998 by Dover Publications, and Codes, Puzzles, and Conspiracy, published in 1992 by W. H. Freeman), and a book of biographies about great computer scientists (Out of Their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists, published in 1995 by Springer-Verlag). He is a coauthor of Pattern Discovery in Biomolecular Data: Tools, Techniques, and Applications, published in 1999 by Oxford University Press. In addition, he has coauthored 30 journal papers and 40 conference papers and these days spends most of his time in building data mining and pattern recognition software. He writes a monthly puzzle column for Scientific American.

Cathy H. Wu   National Biomedical Research Foundation, Georgetown University Medical Center, 3900 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20007 (wuc@nbrf.georgetown.edu). Dr. Wu received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in plant pathology from Purdue University and a second M.S. degree, in computer science, from the University of Texas at Tyler. She is Director of Bioinformatics, National Biomedical Research Foundation, and an adjunct professor of Georgetown University Medical Center, George Mason University, and the University of Maryland. Dr. Wu has conducted bioinformatics research since 1990 and developed several systems including the patented MOTIFIND neural network, GeneFIND protein family identification system, and ProClass/iProClass protein family database. She is author of the book Neural Networks and Genome Informatics, published by Elsevier Science in 2000. She is also a member of the board of directors of the International Society for Computational Biology and the program cochair for 2001, with Dr. Wang, of the Atlantic Symposium, Computational Biology and Genome Information Systems.