Computational Biology Pioneer Lawrence Hunter Joins Sage Bionetworks Board

Sage Bionetworks has announced the appointment of computational biology pioneer Lawrence Hunter to its Board of Directors. Hunter, a Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Chicago, brings a wealth of experience to the organization, having spent 23 years at the University of Colorado before his recent move.

Hunter is renowned for his contributions to the field of computational biology. In 1997, he founded the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) and served as its president until 2000. He is also a co-founder of two major conferences in the field: Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) and the Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing (PSB).

Hunter's recent research focuses on biomedical knowledge graphs and their integration with large language models. His work includes the senior authorship of the paper describing PheKnowLator, an open-source knowledge graph ecosystem for the life sciences. His research group has developed an "ignorance base," a system for identifying what the scientific literature does not yet know.

Hunter joins Sage's existing Board of Directors, which includes Stephen H. Friend, MD, PhD, Board Chair and Sage Bionetworks Co-Founder; Eric Schadt, PhD, Director and Sage Bionetworks Co-Founder; Luca Foschini, PhD, President & CEO; Jennifer Goldsack, MChem, MA, MBA, OLY, Interim Treasurer; Brian J. Fox, Director; Carole Goble, CBE, FREng, FBCS, CITP, Director; and Andrea Varsavsky, PhD, Board Secretary (non-voting member).