{"680495":{"#nid":"680495","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Faculty Wins Award for Trailblazing Work in Computing and Biology","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech Regents\u2019 Professor\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cse.gatech.edu\/people\/srinivas-aluru\u0022\u003ESrinivas Aluru\u003C\/a\u003E is the recipient of the Charles Babbage Award for 2025. Aluru was awarded for pioneering research contributions that intersect parallel computing and computational biology.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis is a very well-deserved recognition for Srinivas as he joins the illustrious list of past recipients of the Charles Babbage Award,\u201d said \u003Cstrong\u003EVivek Sarkar\u003C\/strong\u003E, the John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of the College of Computing.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSrinivas\u2019 accomplishments reflect positively on himself and all of us at Georgia Tech. This is indeed an occasion to celebrate.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe IEEE Computer Society presents the Babbage Award annually. The award recognizes significant contributions to parallel computation.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E[Related:\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.computer.org\/publications\/tech-news\/insider-membership-news\/2025-charles-babbage-award-winner\u0022\u003EIEEE-CS interview with Aluru on his award-winning career\u003C\/a\u003E]\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.computer.org\/profiles\/srinivas-aluru\u0022\u003EThe award\u003C\/a\u003E is named after Charles Babbage, widely considered to be a \u201cfather of the computer.\u201d Babbage and Ada Lovelace are credited with inventing the first mechanical computers in the 19th century, eventually leading to more complex designs.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAluru is a pioneer in computational genomics, an area of biology that studies the order, structure, function, and evolution of genetic material. Throughout his career, his lab has developed software and algorithms to analyze the genomes of several species of plants, animals, and microorganisms.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGenome base pair sizes can number into the billions, which can be interpreted as massive datasets. Ever since the early years of his career, Aluru championed parallel computing as a practical approach to studying these challenging datasets.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EParallelism divides a large problem into smaller ones, allowing different processors on a computer to solve the simpler tasks simultaneously. This approach breaks a genome into smaller segments, allowing computers to efficiently transcribe genetic code and identify insightful patterns.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cSrinivas Aluru\u2019s groundbreaking contributions have profoundly shaped the intersection of parallel processing and bioinformatics. His work is nothing short of extraordinary,\u201d said \u003Cstrong\u003EYves Robert\u003C\/strong\u003E, awards chair of the IEEE Computer Society Babbage Committee.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt is a privilege to recognize a researcher whose work will undoubtedly have a lasting impact for generations to come.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIEEE selected Aluru as a fellow in 2010, and he recently served as the editor-in-chief of the journal \u003Cem\u003EIEEE\/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics\u003C\/em\u003E.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAluru has fellowships with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a past recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, IBM Faculty Award, and the Swarnajayanti Fellowship from the government of India.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlong with receiving the Babbage Award, Aluru\u2019s leadership acumen earned him the\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.cc.gatech.edu\/news\/new-team-associate-deans-ready-advance-college-initiatives\u0022\u003Erecent appointment as senior associate dean\u003C\/a\u003E of Georgia Tech\u2019s College of Computing.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAluru helped form the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) at Georgia Tech in 2016, serving as co-executive director. Later, he became the institute\u2019s sole executive director from 2019 to 2025. Regents\u2019 Professor\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/research.gatech.edu\/david-sherril-serve-interim-director-institute-data-engineering-and-science\u0022\u003EC. David Sherrill became interim executive director of IDEaS\u003C\/a\u003E when Aluru accepted his associate dean appointment. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAluru started at Georgia Tech in 2013 to join the new School of Computational Science and Engineering, established in 2010. He served as the School\u2019s interim chair from 2019 to 2020. In 2023, the University System of Georgia appointed Aluru as Regents\u2019 Professor.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAluru completed his Ph.D. at Iowa State University in 1994. He then worked at Ames National Laboratory, Syracuse University, and New Mexico State University before returning to his alma mater from 1999 to 2013.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis award is a recognition of over two and a half decades of research efforts in my group, reflecting not only my work but that of numerous graduate students and collaborators,\u201d said Aluru.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI hope the award draws attention to the importance of parallel methods in computational biology and points key advancements to new entrants in the field.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech Regents\u2019 Professor\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/cse.gatech.edu\/people\/srinivas-aluru\u0022\u003ESrinivas Aluru\u003C\/a\u003E is the recipient of the Charles Babbage Award for 2025. Aluru was awarded for pioneering research contributions that intersect parallel computing and computational biology.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech Regents\u2019 Professor Srinivas Aluru is the recipient of the Charles Babbage Award for 2025. "}],"uid":"36319","created_gmt":"2025-02-14 17:22:17","changed_gmt":"2025-02-14 17:28:03","author":"Bryant Wine","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-02-14T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2025-02-14T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"676289":{"id":"676289","type":"image","title":"Aluru Babbage Award Head Photo.jpg","body":null,"created":"1739553755","gmt_created":"2025-02-14 17:22:35","changed":"1739553755","gmt_changed":"2025-02-14 17:22:35","alt":"Srinivas Aluru IEEE-CS Charles Babbage Award","file":{"fid":"260044","name":"Aluru Babbage Award Head Photo.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/02\/14\/Aluru%20Babbage%20Award%20Head%20Photo.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/02\/14\/Aluru%20Babbage%20Award%20Head%20Photo.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":93891,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/02\/14\/Aluru%20Babbage%20Award%20Head%20Photo.jpg?itok=ibf8NKff"}}},"media_ids":["676289"],"related_links":[{"url":"https:\/\/www.cc.gatech.edu\/news\/faculty-wins-award-trailblazing-work-computing-and-biology","title":"Faculty Wins Award for Trailblazing Work in Computing and Biology"}],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"50877","name":"School of Computational Science and Engineering"}],"categories":[{"id":"138","name":"Biotechnology, Health, Bioengineering, Genetics"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"146","name":"Life Sciences and Biology"}],"keywords":[{"id":"654","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"166983","name":"School of Computational Science and Engineering"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"},{"id":"10199","name":"Daily Digest"},{"id":"170447","name":"Institute for Data Engineering and Science"},{"id":"9153","name":"Research Horizons"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39441","name":"Bioengineering and Bioscience"},{"id":"39431","name":"Data Engineering and Science"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EBryant Wine, Communications Officer\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:bryant.wine@cc.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Ebryant.wine@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}