Participants
‹ BackDr Mohammed Alser
Lecturer and Senior Researcher of Bioinformatics and Computer Architecture, ETH Zurich
CV
I am a Lecturer and Senior Researcher at the Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich. My primary research interest is tackling and accelerating challenging computational problems, adapted to modern heterogeneous computing environments. I am currently working with Professor Onur Mutlu, SAFARI Research Group, on developing new algorithmic methods and hardware architectures for analyzing genome sequences and profiling metagenomics samples efficiently and much faster than ever before. I am also investigating new computational methods for addressing the performance bottlenecks in the realm of bioinformatics and computational genomics.
I earned my PhD in Computer Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey, where i was a TÜBITAK fellow under the supervision of Professor Can Alkan and Professor Onur Mutlu. My PhD thesis received the 2018 IEEE Doctoral Dissertation Award. During my PhD, I developed new, more efficient algorithmic methods for comparing donor DNA segments with well-studied reference genome aiming at accelerating the discovery of genetic disorders. My PhD work is the first to leverage specialized hardware chips for accelerating the detection of dissimilar DNA segments.
I received the 2018 IEEE Doctoral Dissertation Award. I was also named as the best Palestinian PhD student in Turkey and received the 2017 Yasser Arafat Award for academic excellence. I also received the HiPEAC Collaboration Grant 2018, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) Fellowship 2014-2018 for international students, the UNESCO Chair in Data Privacy Travel Grant 2015, the Bilkent University Merit Scholarship 2014-2018 for my academic achievements and contributions.