Kihara and Vitek Named 2013 University Faculty Scholars

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences and Computer Science Daisuke Kihara and Associate Professor of Statistics and Computer Science Olga Vitek are two of four Purdue University College of Science faculty named University Faculty Scholars for 2013.

Approved by the Office of the Provost, the University Faculty Scholar designation recognizes faculty members who hold the rank of tenured associate professor or professors who have been in the rank for no more than five years at the time of the designation. The term of appointment is five years. University Faculty Scholars receive a discretionary allocation in accordance with University policy. This year's appointments will begin on July 1, 2013.

Kihara (photo at left), who joined the Departments of Computer Science and Biological Sciences in 2003, has research interests that lie in bioinformatics and computational biology, specifically protein tertiary structure prediction/comparison, protein sequence analysis, the evolution of protein families, and metabolic/regulatory pathway analysis. Learn more about his work at the website of the Kihara Bioinformatics Laboratory.

Vitek (photo at right), who joined the Departments of Computer Science and Statistics in 2006, has research interests in statistical and computational methods for high-dimensional molecular biology, in particular for mass spectrometry-based proteomics. Methodological aspects of her work include Bayesian modeling, statistical computing, and experimental design. Learn more about her work at the website of the Laboratory for Statistical Proteomics and Bioinformatics.

Congratulations to Professors Daisuke Kihara and Olga Vitek on this recognition!