Pop Named Interim Director of UMIACS

Mihai Pop, a professor in the Department of Computer Science with appointments in the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), was recently named interim director of UMIACS.

Pop will provide leadership to faculty, staff and students in UMIACS in the absence of Amitabh Varshney, who is currently serving as the university’s interim vice president for research.

Pop is a noted researcher and educator active in numerous interdisciplinary, cross-institutional projects. His research interests cover several areas of bioinformatics, primarily related to the development of computational algorithms for analyzing biological data generated through high-throughput experimental techniques, such as sequencing technologies.

Part of Pop’s research focuses on the computational analysis of the microbial communities inhabiting our world and our bodies—a scientific field called metagenomics. His lab has developed a number of software tools that are now widely used in the field. He has also been an active participant in a number of large projects, including the Human Microbiome Project, and the GEMS study of diarrheal disease in children from the developing world.

Pop received his doctorate in computer science from Johns Hopkins University in 2000 and has been at the University of Maryland since 2005.