Bioinformatics is a rapidly growing area of molecular biology that addresses the use of computers for the acquisition, management, and analysis of biological information. The explosion of interest
in bioinformatics in the past few years has been driven by the tremendous growth of public DNA and protein sequence information due to the Human
Genome Project and now the explosion of microarray gene expression data. Yet the ability of scientists to make use of this vast resource of data is limited by the quality of the bioinformatics tools that are available to them. In particular, the current generation of bioinformatics
tools generally lack efficient, intuitive user interfaces, which acts as a barrier for many investigators.

I am involved in collaborative databse development work that will allow investigators to mine gene expression data generated at many different Universities, and to perform higher-level analysis on sets of genes found to be differentially regulated.

The sequence analysis services of the Research Computing Resource is a shared resource available to all faculty and researchers at NYU and affiliated institutions. We maintain a variety of software packages on the RCR''''s UNIX server (including GCG, FASTA3, PHYLIP, Phred/Phrap, etc.); keeping up to date local copies of all public DNA and protein sequence databases; and evaluating, purchasing and managing site licensed molecular
biology software for desktop computers. Our group works to develop new user interfaces for bioinformatics software, and to provide training on the use of our software to our users - on the web, by e-mail, telephone, and in person.

I act as the bioinformatics consultant for NYU, collaborating as needed on a wide range of research projects. The extent of these collaborations ranges from a few consultation meetings to full fledged co-investigator status on NIH
grants. I am currently working on projects for the analysis of cDNA libraries from the malaria parasite, and analysis of human microarray data from a variety of clinical and basic science research projects. Other projects that I have recently worked on include the
discovery of new brain-specific proteases in the public EST database, discovery of antigens using a pattern based search of complete genome sequences, and an evolutionary analysis of the mammalian glucosidase gene family.