Books The processes of life | Name Lawrence Hunter | |
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Fields Computational BiologyArtificial IntelligenceBioinformatics Thesis Knowledge acquisition planning: Gaining expertise through experience (1989) Doctoral students J. Gregory CaporasoImran ShahLorraine TanabeRonald TaylorAnis Karimpour-FardSteve RussellSonia LeachZhiyong Lu Notable awards Engelmore Prize for Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 2003 (presented by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence)Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics, 2002-Regent's Award for Scholarship and Technical Achievement 1994Meritorious Service Award, National Library of Medicine, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998Excellence in Research Award, University of Colorado School of Medicine Dept. of Pharmacology, 2007Excellence in Teaching Award, University of Colorado School of Medicine Dept. of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, 2004 | ||
Sacrifice
Professor Lawrence E. Hunter is Director of the Center for Computational Biology and of the Computational Bioscience Program at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is an internationally known scholar, focused on computational biology, knowledge-driven extraction of information from the primary biomedical literature, the semantic integration of knowledge resources in molecular biology, and the use of knowledge in the analysis of high-throughput data, as well as for his foundational work in computational biology, which led to the genesis of the major professional organization in the field and two international conferences.
Contents
Career
Hunter completed his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1989, Knowledge Acquisition Planning: Gaining Expertise Through Experience, on diagnosis of lung cancer from histological images using Case-based reasoning, under the guidance of Roger Schank. Faced with a choice between careers in the main applications of artificial intelligence---game programming and defense work—Hunter chose to create a new discipline, bioinformatics. From 1989 to 2000, Hunter worked as a computer scientist and section chief for National Institutes of Health sections devoted to statistical and bioinformatic research. He was an adjunct faculty member at George Mason University from 1991 through 2000 and an associate professor in the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine from 2000 to 2008. He was promoted to professor in 2008.
ISCB
In 1997, Hunter founded what has become the largest professional organization in computational biology and bioinformatics, the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB).
Conferences
Hunter was also a founder of three successful international conferences in bioinformatics, the International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology and the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing and the Rocky Mountain Bioinformatics Conference. He is also a co-organizer of the biological visualization conference Vizbi. Hunter cofounded and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Molecular Mining Corporation from 1997 to 2003. Hunter is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and the winner of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence’s 2003 Engelmore Prize for Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence.
Influence
Hunter is credited with being one of the founding fathers of bioinformatics. Throughout his career Hunter has researched and directed research groups investigating the development and application of advanced computational techniques for biomedicine to high-throughput assays, particularly the application of statistical and knowledge-based techniques to the analysis of high-throughput data and of biomedical texts. He has proposed neurobiologically and evolutionarily informed computational models of cognition, and ethical issues related to computational bioscience.