Speaker Bio: Dr. Robert Jernigan
Dr. Robert Jernigan is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University and Director of the Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics. His research focuses on understanding protein structure and function through computational approaches, with the goal of improving predictive accuracy from protein sequences and developing better methods for identifying biological function.

Dr. Jernigan has an extensive interdisciplinary background in both scientific research and research administration. Trained as a physical chemist, he spent many years at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, where he served as Deputy Laboratory Chief of the Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology and led the Molecular Structure Section within the National Cancer Institute. In 2002, he joined Iowa State University to lead the Baker Center, where he continues to conduct research on large-scale protein models, enhanced sequence matching, and AI-driven approaches to biological discovery.