Michael Spencer Waterman (born June 28, 1942) is a

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

, Mathematics and

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

at the University of Southern California (USC), where he holds an Endowed Associates Chair in Biological Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science. He previously held positions at

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

and

Idaho State University , mottoeng = "The truth will set you free" , established = , former_names = Academy of Idaho(1901–1915)Idaho Technical Institute(1915–1927) University of Idaho—Southern Branch(1927–1947)Idaho Stat ...

Education and early life

Waterman grew up near

Bandon, Oregon Bandon () is a city in Coos County, Oregon, United States, on the south side of the mouth of the Coquille River. It was named by George Bennet, an Irish peer, who settled nearby in 1873 and named the town after Bandon in Ireland, his hometown ...

, and earned a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from

Oregon State University Oregon State University (OSU) is a public land-grant, research university in Corvallis, Oregon. OSU offers more than 200 undergraduate-degree programs along with a variety of graduate and doctoral degrees. It has the 10th largest engineering c ...

, followed by a PhD in statistics and

probability Probability is the branch of mathematics concerning numerical descriptions of how likely an event is to occur, or how likely it is that a proposition is true. The probability of an event is a number between 0 and 1, where, roughly speakin ...

from Michigan State University in 1969.

Research and career

Waterman is one of the founders and current leaders in the area of computational biology. He focuses on applying mathematics, statistics, and computer science techniques to various problems in

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

. His work has contributed to some of the most widely used tools in the field. In particular, the Smith-Waterman algorithm (developed with Temple F. Smith) is the basis for many sequence alignment programs. In 1988, Waterman and

Eric Lander Eric Steven Lander (born February 3, 1957) is an American mathematician and geneticist who served as the 11th director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to the President, serving on the presidential Cabinet. La ...

published a landmark paper describing a mathematical model for fingerprint mapping. This work formed one of the theoretical cornerstones for many of the later DNA mapping and sequencing projects, especially the Human Genome Project. A 1995 paper by Idury and Waterman introduced Eulerian-

De Bruijn sequence In combinatorial mathematics, a de Bruijn sequence of order ''n'' on a size-''k'' alphabet ''A'' is a cyclic sequence in which every possible length-''n'' string on ''A'' occurs exactly once as a substring (i.e., as a ''contiguous'' subseq ...

assembly which is widely used in next-generation sequencing projects. With Pavel A. Pevzner (a former

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

in his lab), he began the international conference Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB), and he is a founding editor of the ''

Journal of Computational Biology The ''Journal of Computational Biology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering computational biology and bioinformatics. It was established in 1994 and is published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The editors-in-chief are Sorin Istrail ...

''. Waterman also authored one of the earliest textbooks in the field: ''Introduction to Computational Biology''.

Awards and honors

With Cyrus Chothia and

David Haussler David Haussler (born 1953) is an American bioinformatician known for his work leading the team that assembled the first human genome sequence in the race to complete the Human Genome Project and subsequently for comparative genome analysis that d ...

, Waterman was awarded the 2015

Dan David Prize The Dan David Prize is a major international award that recognizes and supports outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. It awards nine prizes of $300,000 each year to outstanding ...

for his contributions to the field of bioinformatics. He was awarded an

Honorary Doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

from

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

in 2011, and an

from the

University of Southern Denmark The University of Southern Denmark ( da, Syddansk Universitet, lit=South Danish University, abbr. SDU) is a university in Denmark that has campuses located in Southern Denmark and on Zealand. The university offers a number of joint programmes in ...

in 2013. Waterman has been a member of the US

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

since 1995, a member of the US

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of ...

since 2012, a member of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republi ...

since 2013, and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences since 2001. He has been an academician of the French Academy of Sciences since 2005. Waterman was elected an

ISCB Fellow ISCB Fellowship is an award granted to scientists that the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) judges to have made “outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics”. , there are 76 Fellow ...

in 2009 by the

International Society for Computational Biology The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is a scholarly society for researchers in computational biology and bioinformatics. The society was founded in 1997 to provide a stable financial home for the Intelligent Systems for Mole ...

and was awarded their ISCB Senior Scientist Award in 2009.

Personal life

Waterman has written a memoir, ''Getting Outside'', of a childhood spent on an isolated livestock ranch on the southern coast of Oregon in the mid-twentieth century.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Waterman, Michael Living people 1942 births People from Bandon, Oregon 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American bioinformaticians 21st-century American biologists University of Southern California faculty Idaho State University faculty Oregon State University alumni Fellows of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Members of the French Academy of Sciences Foreign members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences People from Coquille, Oregon American statisticians