Lukasz Kurgan

His research focuses on the applications of machine learning in bioinformatics and structural bioinformatics of proteins, with focus on intrinsically disordered proteins, structural genomics, and protein function prediction. His research was funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Dr. Kurgan published over 150 articles on topic related to bioinformatics and machine learning, which have been cited over 12,000 times according to Google Scholar. His research lab has developed popular methods for protein function prediction and protein structure prediction including MoRFpred, MFDp, DEPICTER, DRNApred, fDETECT, and DisoRDPbind. His lab also released the PDID protein-drug interaction database and the DescribePROT protein function database. Some of these tools won accolades in international competitions/assessments including the 3 place in disorder prediction at the 2012 Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) and the top finish at the 2018 Critical Assessment of Intrinsic protein Disorder (CAID1).

Lukasz Kurgan is the Robert J. Mattauch Endowed Professor of Computer Science at the Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A. He was a professor at the University of Alberta between 2003 and 2015. Dr. Kurgan earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003 and his M.Sc. degree in automation and robotics from the AGH University of Science and Technology in 1999.