June 2013
CV
Name: Unger Ron
Date of birth: 30th Nov. 1958
The Mina & Everard Goodman Faculty of Life Science,
Bar-IlanUniversity, Ramat-Gan,52900 Israel
Email: Tel: 972-3-5318124 Fax: 972-3-7384058
Education,
From-To / Institute / Area of Speciality / Degree1981-1984 / The Technion, The IsraelInstitute of Technology, Haifa / Extended program in Computer Science / B.Sc., Cum Laude
1984-1986 / Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel / Computational Biology / M.Sc.
1986-1990 / Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel / Computational Biology / Ph.D.
Doctoral Thesis:Enriched Analysis of Biological Sequences
Supervisor:Prof. Joel L. Sussman and Prof. David Harel
Employment
From-To / Institute / Research Area / Title2005-Present / Faculty of Life Sciences,
Bar-Ilan University, Israel / Computational Biology / Associate Professor
2003-2007 / Open University, Israel / Bioinformatics Program / Consultant
1998-Present / Faculty of Life Sciences,
Bar-Ilan University, Israel / Bioinformatics Undergraduate Program / Head
2001-2002 / Center for Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB), University of Maryland / Nano-Biotechnology / Sabbatical: Visiting Professor
1995-2005 / Faculty of Life Sciences,
Bar-Ilan University, Israel / Computational Biology / Senior Lecturer
1990-1994 / A joint appointment with the Center of Advanced Research in Biotechnology (CARB) - and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS)-University of Maryland / Computational Biology / Postdoctoral
Research Scientist
Public Scientific Activities
From-To / Type of Activity or Appointment2009 / Recipient of the Teva Founders’ Prize
2006-2009 / President of the Israeli Society of Bioinformatics and Computational biology (ISBCB)
2006 / Organizer and Co-Chairman of the Ninth Israeli Bioinformatics Conference
2006 / Member of the organizing committee of ECCB 2006, the sixth European Conference for Computational Biology
2005 / Board member and President Elect of ISBCB (Israel Society of Bioinformatics and Computational biology)
2003 / Member of organizing committee of the 7th Israeli Bioinformatics Conference
1996-2000 / Steering Committee: INN 2000 - NationalCenter for Bioinformatics
1999 / Organizer and Chairman of the Third Israeli Bioinformatics Conference
Main Research Interests
My research interests are in the field of Computational Biology. Current main research projects are:
•Using simple models to understand protein folding
In recent years it became evident that numerous human diseases (e.g. Alzheimer’s, Parkinson, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) are due to defects in the folding process of the implicated proteins. One of the research subjects we study in this context is understanding, using simple lattice model, the interactions that dominate protein folding and the interactions found between proteins and the chaperon systems which are involved in in-vivo folding. Many of these works are done in collaboration with Prof. Amnon Horovitz from the Weizmann Institute. Additional work in this direction is revealing a novel mechanism that facilitate folding of multi domain proteins, demonstrating that there is a fine tuning of the relative folding rates of different domains.
•Computational characterization of non-coding RNA molecules and their targets
Trypanosomes are infectious parasites that have heavy burden on human health and farm animals, especially in developing countries. Trypanosomes have unique RNA editing and manipulation processes which offer therapeutic targets. Together with the experimental lab of Prof. Shula Michaeli in BIU we are studying the repertoire of nom-coding RNA (ncRNA) in these organisms. The bioinformatics of ncRNA molecules in prokaryotic and simple eukaryotic (like parasites) is different from the more studied higher eukaryotic organisms. Thus, in the last few years we devoted a significant effort to develop computational tools suitable to study ncRNA molecules in these organisms and conducted large scale studies using computational tools to characterize their ncRNA molecules.
•Understanding biological robustness using systems biology analysis
Genome wide association studies identified many loci where the presence of particular personal variation (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism, SNP) is linked to increased risk for common human diseases like high blood pressure or type2 diabetes. The key characteristic of complex trait disease - increasing risk of disease with number of affected loci - implies robustness properties of these networks unlike any found in designed systems. Our hypothesis is that the organizational principles and features of human robustness to mutations are a consequence of underlying evolutionary processes. Thus, the key to successful exploitation of the genomic data is the application of evolutionary principles to network analysis. Some of this work is done in collaboration with Prof. John Moult from the University of Maryland.
•Medical data mining
Novel computational methods of Machine Learning enable the discovery of complex patterns within very large datasets. Applying these methods to medical data records will enable the identification of complex risk factors and will lead to better predictive personalized medicine. Israel has an advanced healthcare system and centralized, well maintained, medical databases. We have started collaborations with Health Organizations (Kopot Holim) and hospitals to analyze their data. Current projects include analysis of cognitive data from computerized tests to aid in early detection of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease; analysis of data of patients that undergo bone marrow transplantation to predict their survival rates and analysis of medical records to assist primary physicians to identify anomalous patients. Some of this research is done in collaboration with Dr. Yanay Ofran from BIU.
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