Robert Murphy receives the Alan J. Perlis Award

Robert Murphy, Ray and Stephanie Lane Professor of Computational Biology, Emeritus, was presented the Alan J. Perlis award during the School of Computer Science's Founders Day celebration. This award was established in 2013 to recognize Carnegie Mellon University faculty who has shown sustained creativity in out-of-the-box computer science, leading to demonstrated real-world impact. 

Dr. Murphy has worked with both experimental and computational cell biology, with a particular emphasis on developing fully-automated methods to understand the subcellular locations of proteins and how they change during development or disease (location proteomics). He has use machine learning methods to compare, classify and cluster spatiotemporal patterns in microscope images and construct generative models directly from images to capture the essence of each subcellular pattern as well as the variation in pattern from cell to cell. With the goal to identify all “subcellular location families”, how they change (especially during oncogenesis) and to provide generative models for each family that can be incorporated into systems biology simulations. He is particularly interested in active learning approaches to create closed loop systems of interpretation, modeling, experiment planning and automated data acquisition, enabling automated scientific discovery. You can watch the award ceremony here.