Jean Gao, Ph.D., Announced as New Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Baylor University
Baylor University’s School of Engineering and Computer Science announced the hiring of Jean Gao, Ph.D., as the new Chair of the Department of Computer Science.
“We are delighted to welcome Dr. Jean Gao as Chair of the Computer Science Department at Baylor,” said Daniel Pack, Ph.D., dean of the School of Engineering and Computer Science. “Dr. Gao brings with her an outstanding academic record, along with nationally recognized leadership at both the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her leadership in shaping the research enterprise of the department in the evolving landscape of federally funded research will be an invaluable asset to our faculty and students. We look forward to the vision, energy, and insight she will bring as we advance the mission of the School and Baylor.”
At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Gao served as a Program Director in the Office of Genomic Data Science at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). She managed a portfolio of grants focused on developing data science and computational methods to address complex challenges in genomics science and genomic medicine. She was co-lead for the CGDS (Computational Genomics and Data Science) R01 and R21 program, and the Common Fund Bridge2AI (Bridge to Artificial Intelligence) program. In addition, she represented NHGRI for the ODSS (Office of Data Science Strategy) Sustainable Software Tools program. She also managed several flagship cyberinfrastructure projects, including Galaxy, Genome Browser, Bioconductor, and Dockstore. Her portfolio also includes the MorPhiC (Molecular Phenotypes of Null Alleles in Cells) program.
Prior to joining NHGRI, Dr. Gao served for four years as a Program Director in the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Biological Infrastructure (DBI). As the Program Director for bioinformatics and computational biology, she managed related grant portfolios under DBI (Innovation: Bioinformatics program and Capacity: Cyberinfrastructure program). She co-initiated several NSF-wide programs, including Mid-Career Advancement (MCA), the Dark Dimensions for the RNA Regulome (D2R2) Ideas Lab, and Pathways to Enable Open-Source Ecosystems (POSE).
“I am really grateful to Baylor for giving me this opportunity, and I cherish Baylor's Christian values and everything that the Baylor experience did for my son, who graduated from Baylor with a BS in Biochemistry,” said Gao. “We can see so many applications of computer science in our daily lives, and I think the Baylor's Computer Science Department is well positioned to help meet critical societal needs. We have many opportunities in front of us, with a lot of growth potential. I look forward to working with the excellent faculty in our department to figure out how to make the most of those opportunities to impact our students and the world.”
Previously, Dr. Gao was a tenured Full Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Texas at Arlington. Her research focuses on developing efficient algorithms to solve large scale data analytics problems in basic medicine and in clinical settings while making theoretical and fundamental contributions to machine learning, data mining, artificial intelligence, statistical pattern recognition, and computer vision. Her research discoveries have been reported in over 200 journal and conference manuscripts.
Dr. Gao has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (TCBB) since 2008 and previously chaired its Steering Committee. She is the recipient of prestigious National Science Foundation Early Career Award and is a Lifetime Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).
She holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University, an M.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from Shanghai Medical University.
Dean Pack thanks Greg Hamerly, Ph.D., professor of computer science, for serving as interim department chair.
Excerpts from a Q&A with Dr. Jean Gao (condensed and edited in July 2025)
On your career path beginning in research:
My career in computer science started from my graduate work in what we called pattern recognition, which is like machine learning. My PhD work was using machine learning to process the medical images and video processing, like object tracking. That's part of the data science area of the computer science.
Over the years, my work evolved more broadly to biomedical data analysis. It’s a scale change. Originally, I looked at the organ level, such as the human liver and heart. Then I went to the smaller scale, looking at the proteins and the genes. So basically, my research has moved across different scales, but all of them are centered around using the machine learning, AI, and statistics tools, as well as all the data science related tools, to process the data.
On your experience at the National Institutes of Health (NIH):
My experience at NIH as a program director includes the Bridge2AI, a flagship program. We are in the process of stage one. The goal here is to generate multi-modality, comprehensive, large-scale AI-ready data, instead of relying on individual efforts.
Once the stage one of AI-ready data concludes, we can open a lot of opportunities for AI and machine learning in research and knowledge discovery. Bridge2AI is one of the programs I believe is going to be important to our computer science researchers at Baylor. Stage two is scheduled to be launched sometime next year. With the availability of the extensive multi-modality data, our faculty here are going to benefit from this program on both developing intelligent AI platforms and solving biomedical grand challenges.
Experience at the National Science Foundation (NSF):
My experience at NSF included developing and managing the large-scale cyber infrastructure program called Capacity Cyberinfrastructure, which is also going to be relevant for the future of our Computer Science Department and interdisciplinary programs here at Baylor, especially in helping Baylor to further establish our unique application-specific cyber infrastructure.
Another experience from my time at NSF which will be helpful for our faculty: I co-launched one of the programs, Middle Career Advancement (MCA). All junior faculty know about the NSF Career Awards program, but MCA is geared toward the associate professor and professor in the middle of their careers. This program opens a door for them to pursue something new after they get their tenure, or if they feel like their research has been hindered because of their teaching loads or service commitments.
MCA is a good program for university faculty across the country. I hope the faculty here at Baylor will be able to utilize this opportunity because this program is open both for the associate professor and professor level. The goal here is to help people so they can re-ignite the research portion of their career path.
Why Baylor?
My son graduated from Baylor, so I’m very familiar with the campus. Here he studied Biochemistry. That's why we're so grateful for Baylor. We feel Baylor nurtured our son. Every place I go, it reminds me of visiting my son when he was here. I'm very familiar with the curriculum and degree requirements and many of the systems Baylor utilizes. I was talking to my son the other day and I said, Life is a miracle. I had never expected then that I would end up at Baylor myself.
When I saw an opening in Computer Science Department in Baylor, I decided I would try for it. I am really grateful for Baylor giving me the opportunity. I cherish the Baylor's Christian values and everything the Baylor experience did for my son. Computer science is almost everywhere: from workflow optimization, to manufacturing, to autonomous driving and drug design. We can see so many applications of computer science in our daily lives. I think Baylor's Computer Science Department is well positioned to help meet critical societal needs. We have a lot of opportunities in front of us, and a lot of growth potential. I look forward to working with the excellent faculty in our department to figure out how to make the most of those opportunities to impact our students and the world.
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