Tandy Warnow

 I co-direct the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the University of Texas at Austin (see this page for additional information about the CCBB). I am a member of the Board of Directors of the International Society for Computational Biology (see this page for more information about the ISCB).

I am also affiliated with the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology and the Texas Institute for Computational and Applied Mathematics. I am a member of the four graduate programs at UT: Computer Science, Molecular Biology, Computational and Applied Mathematics, and Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior.

See this page for my two page vita.

• Research Statement

I work on evolutionary history methodology and algorithms in Biology and Historical Linguistics. See our group page for information about my research group (the Phylo Lab). My recent work focuses on five major questions, all related to computational problems in evolutionary tree reconstruction:

• The analytical study of convergence rates of different methods, and the development of provably "fast-converging" methods.
• Fast techniques for NP-hard optimization problems, such as maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony.
• The inference of phylogenetic trees from gene order and content data. (See this page for our work in this area.)
• Visualization and clustering of sets of phylogenetic trees. See this page (by Prof. Nina Amenta) for this work.
• Computational phylogenetics in historical linguistics. (See this page for our early research in historical linguistics.)
• If you are interested in working with me, note that I'll be on sabbatical for 2003-2004, and am not taking any new students.

Education

• Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, Mathematics, 1991.

Honors

• NSF NYI (Young Investigator Award) 1994-2000
• David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship 1995-2001

Current Grants:

• CS 395T: Introduction to Computational Biology. This is an introductory course to algorithmic problems that arise in computational molecular biology, with specific focus on multiple sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction. Here is the syllabus for the course.

Students and Postdocs (Current and Former):

• Li-San Wang(current PhD student)
• Ganesh Ganapathysaravanabavan (current PhD student)
• Usman Roshan (current PhD student)
• Luay Nakhleh(current PhD student)
• Cara Stockham (current PhD student)
• Shibu Yooseph (former PhD student, now at Celera Genomics)
• Katherine St John (former postdoc, now Professor of Computer Science at Lehman College)
• Kevin Atteson (former postdoc)
• Libby Levison (former postdoc)
• Ann Taylor (former postdoc)
• Daniel Huson (formerly at Celera, now a C4 Professor of Bioinformatics in Tubingen, Germany)

Visiting Positions:

• Research Associate, Yale University Department of Computer Science, 1997-1998
• Visiting Professor, Princeton University Department of Computer Science, 1997-1998
• Visiting Professor at the Computer Science Department at the University of Arizona, 1998-1999
• Visiting Research Fellow, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, 1998-1999

Service:

• Co-chair, Organizing Committee for the National Academy of Sciences, Japanese-American Frontiers of Science, 2003.
• Co-chair, Program Committee, COCOON 2003.
• Co-PI on the NSF Research Training Group in Computational Biology at the University of Pennsylvania
• Advisory Board for "Functional Genomics of Stressed Plants" at the University of Arizona
• Steering Committee for the Biotechnology Masters Program at the University of Pennsylvania
• Editorial Board, ACM Journal of Experimental Algorithmics and the Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications.
• Co-Chair, SODA (ACM/SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms) 1999.
• Program committee member WADS 2001, Fun with Algorithms 2001, RECOMB 2001.
• Member, Board of Directors, International Society for Computational Biology.

Personal

• I am personally against the war we are waging, and feel strongly that the President should have not acted without the approval of the United Nations. I also find that there is unusual oppression of such sentiments now within the USA, and think it's important that those of us who are against the war reject such oppression by speaking out against the war. Fortunately, I am not alone. See this page for Senator Byrd's statement, made March 19, 2003.
• I will be on sabbatical at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study starting this summer, sometime.
• I am an avid Zydeco dancer, and also like Latin dancing. If you're in Texas and want to find out who's playing Zydeco locally, check out this site. And if you live in Austin, one of my favorite bands, Brian Jack and the Zydeco Gamblers, are coming to town!!! Join me there Sunday, March 23, at 9 PM: at Midtown Live (7408 Cameron Rd -- Austin, TX -- 512/451-5483). The price of admission includes a buffet with gumbo & boudain & other items.
• Menaka (daughter)
• Kristin Kane (daughter, and choral conductor)
• Kimmen Sjolander (twin sister, also works in computational biology)
• Dana DeSimone (My favorite Zydeco dancer.)
• Raymond Scott (great uncle, deceased)

• See this page for the powerpoint presentation I gave at Berkeley on September 5, 2001,
• See this page for the powerpoint presentation I gave at the Packard Foundation meeting on September 9, 2001.
• See this page for the powerpoint presentation I gave at UT-Austin on November 9, 2001.