People

Fred Wright, Ph.D.

Director of the Bioinformatics Research Center
Goodnight Innovation Distinguished Professor of Statistics and Biological Sciences

306 Ricks Hall
Campus Box 7566
  • 919-515-9060

Spencer V. Muse, Ph.D.

Professor of Statistics
Director of Bioinformatics Graduate Program
Director of Statistics Undergraduate Program

303 Ricks Hall
5276 SAS Hall
Campus Box 7566

Dr. Spencer V. Muse is a Professor of Statistics, who at the time the founding of the center, was an Assistant Professor in the Statistics Department. He was promoted to Associate Professor of Statistics in 2003 and to Professor of Statistics in 2009. Dr. Muse develops statistical methods and software tools for the analysis of DNA sequence data, with emphasis on simultaneous analysis of multiple gene sequences from multiple species using a comparative genomics approach. He teaches ST305, an introductory class for majors, regularly.

Hudson Ashrafi, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Horticultural Science

234 Kilgore Hall
Campus Box 7609

Benjamin Callahan, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Population, Health, & Pathobiology

CVM Research Building 456
Campus Box 8401

Dr. Callahan studies microbiomes - the complex microbial communities which inhabit and interact with almost every part of the world around us. He has developed new bioinformatic methods to more accurately characterize microbial communities, and applied them to the study of the microbial contribution to the pathophysiology of preterm birth. He is also interested in adaptation within microbial populations, which he has studied with a mix of analytics, simulation and experimental evolution.
  • 919-515-8536

Gavin Conant, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences

356 Ricks Hall
Campus Box 7566

Our primary research interest is in understanding the origins of novel features in evolution and ecosystems, in particular how new genetic features appear and are altered by natural selection. One of our major area of interest is in how gene and genome duplications alter cellular networks and hence phenotypes. We also used metagenomic techniques to study how microbial communities can create complex ecosystems through simple assembly rules.

Alon Greenbaum, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Affiliate Graduate Faculty (Bioinformatics)

Engineering Building III (EB3) 1203
021 Biomedical Partnership Center
Campus Box 7115

Steffen Heber, Ph.D.

Professor of Computer Science-Engineering

347 Ricks Hall
Engineering Building II (EB2) 2260
Campus Box 7566


Steffen Heber is a full professor in the Department of Computer Science. He has a joint appointment between the Department of Computer Science and the College of Sciences to support the Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC) at NCSU. Dr. Heber has studied mathematics and biology at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He has received his PhD while working at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) under the supervision of Martin Vingron and Joerg Hoheisel. After postdoctoral research with Pavel Pevzner at UCSD he has joined NCSU in 2003. His research focuses on bioinformatics and computational biology. Dr. Heber develops algorithms for analysis, summarization, and quality control of complex biological data. His research interests include data-driven storytelling, gene transcription and alternative splicing, translation, nature-inspired computation, and common intervals.
  • 919-513-2726

Dahlia Nielsen, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Genetics

358 Ricks Hall
Campus Box 7566

David Rasmussen

Assistant Professor of Entomology & Plant Pathology

312 Ricks Hall & Partners II, Room 1418
Campus Box 7566

Dr. Rasmussen is an infectious disease biologist and developer of phylogenetic methods for tracking the spread of pathogens using genomic sequence data. His research focuses on several human pathogens including dengue, influenza and HIV, as well as agricultural pathogens of plants and animals. Future work in his group will couple experimental viral evolution studies with phylogenetic analyses to better understand the genetic basis of pathogen emergence and adaption to new hosts.

Xinxia Peng, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Molecular Biomedical Sciences

312 Ricks Hall
CVM Research Building 492
Campus Box 7566

The Peng Lab uses systems approaches to better understand pathogen-host-microbiome interactions and microbial pathogenesis. The goal is to uncover underlying molecular mechanisms of microbial pathogenesis and to identify targets of intervention as well as biomarkers for clinical applications. We focus on computational analysis of high-throughput omics data combined with experimental validation. The Lab is housed in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) Research Building located at the NC State Biomedical Centennial Campus, and is part of NC State Bioinformatics Research Center.

Jeffrey Thorne, Ph.D.

Professor of Statistics

323 Ricks Hall
Campus Box 7566

Dr. Thorne regularly teaches Bioinformatics II (ST590C), a core course in the Bioinformatics graduate curriculum. His research focus is evolutionary inference from interspecific data and the reconciliation of such inference techniques with population genetics; developing statistical tools for studying molecular evolution using DNA and protein sequences; protein structure and protein evolution; and using molecular and fossil data to estimate the times since different species had common ancestors.

Jung-Ying Tzeng, Ph.D.

Professor of Statistics

305 Ricks Hall
Campus Box 7566

Dr. Jung-Ying Tzeng teachs Genetic Data Analysis, a special topics course for bioinformatics and statistical genetics students that covers the basics of genetic data analysis and gene mapping. Her research focus is development of statistical methods that can facilitate genetic epidemiologic research on human complex diseases; statistical modeling of multimarker/haplotype association for genome-wide and candidate-gene studies; gene-based and pathway-based analysis for pharmacogenetics; SNP genotyping error and quality control; and sequence-based association studies.

Marcelo Mollinari, Ph.D.

Associate Research Professor of Horticultural Science

366 Ricks Hall
Campus Box 7566

Rafael Guerrero, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences

Thomas Hall 3528B
Campus Box 7566


Cranos Williams

Goodnight Distinguished Professor of Agricultural Analytics
Platform Director, NC Plant Sciences Initiative

Plant Sciences Building (PSB) Rm 3320
Campus Box 7911