Also on zoom- https://umd.zoom.us/j/96718034173?pwd=clNJRks5SzNUcGVxYmxkcVJGNDB4dz09
The analysis of microbial communities has been transformed by sequencing technologies - leading to the birth of a new field: metagenomics. While the new data have empowered biologists to ask new questions, they have also created new challenges for the software tools used to analyze the data. In my talk I will provide an overview of some research problems my lab has been tackling with a specific focus on algorithms for uncovering the heterogeneity inherent in the data derived from natural microbial communities.
Dr. Pop is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and he serves as the Director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University in 2000, and has joined the University of Maryland in 2005. He was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery in 2019. Dr. Pop's current research interests include metagenomic assembly and analysis algorithms with a specific interest in characterizing variation within natural communities. His lab has developed a number of widely used open-source software tools for genome and metagenome analysis. Dr. Pop is actively involved in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate levels and is strongly interested in the development of educational resources for introductory computer science and bioinformatics. He is also actively involved in diversity and inclusion efforts within the university and the broader computer science and computational biology communities.