Ilya Vakser's Biography

Ilya Vakser, Professor, The University of Kansas

Dr. Vakser is an internationally recognized expert in modeling of protein interactions and structural description of protein complexes. He is the author of the FFT docking algorithm, which is a standard tool in protein-protein docking field, and the initiator of the CAPRI protein docking competition. Dr. Vakser earned his PhD in biophysics at Moscow State University in 1989 and received further training at the Weizmann Institute, Washington University, and the Rockefeller University. He served on the faculty of the Medical University of South Carolina as an Assistant and Associate Professor and SUNY Stony Brook as an Associate professor. Since 2005 Dr. Vakser is the founding Director and a Full Professor at the Bioinformatics Program and Center for Bioinformatics at The University of Kansas. Dr. Vakser is the author of many scientific papers resulting from research funded by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and other funding agencies. He combines his research with scientific community-wide activities as an organizer of international conferences and a member of many advisory and steering committees.