Hacking COVID-19: Identifying a Deadly Pathogen

Pavel Arkadevich Pevzner serves as the Ronald R. Taylor Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, San Diego, and director of the NIH Center for Computational Mass Spectrometry, where he has revolutionized the field of computational biology since 2000. After receiving his Ph.D. in mathematics and physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, he completed postdoctoral work with Michael Waterman at USC, before establishing himself through positions at Penn State and USC. His groundbreaking research spans bioinformatics algorithms, genome rearrangements, DNA sequencing, and computational proteomics, leading to significant advances in genome assembly and antibiotics discovery. His academic excellence has been recognized through numerous prestigious honors, including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professorship (2006), ACM Fellowship (2010), ISCB Fellowship (2012), and the ACM Paris Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award (2018). As an educator, he has transformed bioinformatics education through innovative approaches, including the development of massive open online courses that have reached over half a million students, and authored influential textbooks including "Computational Molecular Biology: An Algorithmic Approach" and "Bioinformatics Algorithms: An Active Learning Approach"