Biographical sketches of authors

Sandeep Kumar   Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology, National Cancer Institute, Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, Building 469, Room 151, Frederick, Maryland 21702 (kumarsan@ncifcrf.gov). Dr. Kumar is a Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow in the Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology at the National Cancer Institute, Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center. He received his B.Sc. (Honours) degree in physics from the University of Delhi, India, in 1989, his M.Sc. degree in molecular biology and biotechnology from the G. B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, India, in 1992, and his Ph.D. degree in molecular biophysics from the Indian Institute of Science in 1998. He received the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) scholarship in 1990, a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) junior research fellowship in 1992, and a senior research fellowship in 1994. In 1998, Dr. Kumar received the National Institutes of Health Visiting Fellow Award. He is an author or coauthor of 21 technical papers in the field of protein structure and function.

Haim J. Wolfson   School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel (wolfson@post.tau.ac.il). Dr. Wolfson is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science at Tel Aviv University. He received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Tel Aviv University in 1973, 1975, and 1985, respectively. From 1975 to 1983 he was a Research Officer in the IDF, and from 1985 to 1989 he was an Associate Research Scientist and an Assistant Professor in the Robotics Research Laboratory and Computer Science Department of New York University. In 1989 he joined the Computer Science Department at Tel Aviv University, where he is conducting research in computer vision, spatial pattern discovery, and structural bioinformatics. Dr. Wolfson is the chair of the Tel Aviv University multidisciplinary steering committee on bioinformatics. He was a visiting scientist at New York University and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. Dr. Wolfson has received the year 2000 Juludan Prize awarded by the Technion, Haifa, for Outstanding Research in the Application of Exact Sciences or Advanced Technology to Medicine.

Ruth Nussinov   Medical School, Tel Aviv University, and SAIC, Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology, National Cancer Institute, Frederick Cancer Research Facility, Building 469, Room 151, Frederick, Maryland 21702 (ruthn@ncifcrf.gov). Dr. Nussinov is a Professor in the Department of Human Genetics, School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, and a Senior Scientist at the National Cancer Institute. She received her B.Sc. degree in microbiology from the University of Washington, Seattle, in 1967, and her M.Sc. in biochemistry in 1968 from Rutgers University. She received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Rutgers in 1977. Dr. Nussinov was a Fellow at the Weizmann Institute, and a Visiting Scientist in the Chemistry Department at Berkeley and in the Biochemistry Department at Harvard. She joined the Medical School at Tel Aviv in 1985 as an Associate Professor, and in 1990 became a Full Professor. Her association with the National Institutes of Health began in 1983, first with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and since 1985 with the National Cancer Institute. She is an author and coauthor of more than 180 scientific papers. Until 1990 her papers addressed RNA and DNA sequence and structure and nucleic acid–protein interactions. In 1990 she switched to proteins; her research currently focuses on protein folding and protein binding.