Luay Nakhleh

Luay Nakhleh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Rice University, where he has been a faculty member since 2004. He earned his BSc in Computer Science from the Technion in Israel, followed by a Master's degree from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received several accolades including the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award. At Rice, Nakhleh has received numerous honors for his teaching and research, including the NSF CAREER Award and an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. His research primarily focuses on computational biology, particularly phylogenomics and cancer genomics, and he has contributed significantly to the development of algorithms and models for analyzing biological data.Nakhleh's expertise extends beyond academia; he has served as Chair of the Computer Science Department and is currently the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University. His commitment to education is reflected in his teaching excellence awards, and he continues to influence the next generation of computer scientists through his courses on discrete mathematics and computational biology.