Dr.Keith Crandall

Keith A. Crandall, PhD is the founding Director of the Computational Biology Institute at George Washington University. Professor Crandall studies the computational biology, population genetics, and bioinformatics of a variety of organisms, from crustaceans to agents of infectious diseases.  His lab also focuses on the development and testing of data analytic approaches, especially for Omics and clinical data.  He applies these methods and others to the study of the evolution of infectious diseases with particular focus on microbiome studies. Professor Crandall has published over 400 peer reviewed publications, as well as three books (The Evolution of HIV, Algorithms in Bioinformatics, and Decapod Crustacean Phylogenetics). Dr. Crandall’s research has been funded by both the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health as well as from a variety of other agencies, including American Foundation for AIDS Research, National Geographic, US Forest Service, Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturer’s of America Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, etc.  He has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar to Oxford University and an Allen Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution Sabbatical Fellowship at the Bioinformatics Institute at the University of Auckland.  Professor Crandall has received a number of awards for research and teaching, including an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in Molecular Evolution at the University of Texas, the American Naturalist Society Young Investigator Award, an NSF CAREER Award, a PhRMA Foundation Faculty Development Award in Bioinformatics, an NIH James A. Shannon Directors Award, ISI Highly Cited Designation, Honors Professor of the Year award at Brigham Young University, and the Edward O. Wilson Naturalist Award. He is an elected Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Linnean Society of London.  Professor Crandall earned his BA degree from Kalamazoo College in Biology and Mathematics, an MA degree from Washington University in Statistics, and a PhD from Washington University in Biology and Biomedical Sciences.  He also served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Puyo, Ecuador.