Ben Langmead is a

computational biologist Computational biology refers to the use of data analysis, mathematical modeling and computational simulations to understand biological systems and relationships. An intersection of computer science, biology, and big data, the field also has f ...

and associate professor in the Computational Biology & Medicine Group at

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consiste ...

Education

Langmead gained his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

degree in

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 (includin ...

from

Columbia College, Columbia University Columbia College is the oldest undergraduate college of Columbia University, situated on the university's main campus in Morningside Heights in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded by the Church of England in 1754 as King's ...

in 2003. He gained both his

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast ...

and PhD degrees in computer science from the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the Flagship un ...

, supervised by

Steven Salzberg Steven Lloyd Salzberg (born 1960) is an American computational biologist and computer scientist who is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science, and Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, where he is als ...

, in 2009 and 2012, respectively.

Career

Langmead is known for developing the

Bowtie The bow tie is a type of necktie. A modern bow tie is tied using a common shoelace knot, which is also called the bow knot for that reason. It consists of a ribbon of fabric tied around the collar of a shirt in a symmetrical manner so that ...

sequence alignment In bioinformatics, a sequence alignment is a way of arranging the sequences of DNA, RNA, or protein to identify regions of similarity that may be a consequence of functional, structural, or evolutionary relationships between the sequences. Ali ...

algorithm, which implements the

Burrows–Wheeler transform The Burrows–Wheeler transform (BWT, also called block-sorting compression) rearranges a character string into runs of similar characters. This is useful for compression, since it tends to be easy to compress a string that has runs of repeated c ...

in order to improve the scalability of sequence alignment. , the original ''

Genome Biology ''Genome Biology'' is a peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering research in genomics. It was established in 2000 and is published by BioMed Central. The chief editor is currently Andrew Cosgrove ( BioMed Central, New York). Abstrac ...

'' paper which describes the Bowtie software package has been cited over 20,000 times. Langmead became an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University in July 2012.

Awards

Langmead was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Award in 2016 for his promotion of free and open access materials for use in life sciences.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Langmead, Ben Living people American bioinformaticians Johns Hopkins University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Columbia College (New York) alumni University System of Maryland alumni