Rate My Professor Lukaz Kurgan

Lukasz Kurgan, Ph.D., is the Robert J. Mattauch Endowed Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Commonwealth University, a position he has held since September 2015. He leads the (un)Structural Bioinformatics Lab, where his team develops and applies machine learning and deep learning models for structural bioinformatics, including prediction and modeling of protein and short RNA structures and functions, protein-ligand interactions, and characterization of intrinsic disorder in proteins. Kurgan also maintains an adjunct professorship in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta. His academic journey began with an M.Sc. degree with honors in Automation and Robotics from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland, in 1999, where he received the Gold Medal of Stanislaw Staszic and the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. He then pursued and completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2003. From 2003 to 2015, he progressed from Assistant Professor to Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada.

Kurgan's prolific research output includes over 150 peer-reviewed publications with more than 12,000 citations, as per Google Scholar. Notable works encompass 'A survey of knowledge discovery and data mining process models' (The Knowledge Engineering Review, 2006), 'flDPnn: Accurate intrinsic disorder prediction with putative mechanisms' (Nature Communications, 2021), and contributions to high-impact reviews such as 'Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy.' His lab has pioneered tools and databases like flDPnn2, DescribePROT for amino acid-level protein descriptions, DEPICTER2 for disorder and function predictions, CONNECTOR for protein-drug interactions, and PDID. Achievements include top finishes in international competitions such as CAID (winners 2021 and 2023) and CASP (3rd place in disorder prediction, 2012). He has been honored as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (2023), Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2018), Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts (2022), Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (2021), Fellow of the Kosciuszko Foundation Collegium of Eminent Scientists (2018), Senior Member of the International Society for Computational Biology (2019), and Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (2012). Kurgan serves as Editor-in-Chief of Biomolecules (since 2024), Section Editor-in-Chief for Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (2018-2024), and on editorial boards of Bioinformatics, Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal, and others.