Kevin Karplus is a professor emeritus at

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

, currently in the Biomolecular Engineering Department. He is probably best known for work he did as a computer science graduate student at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

on the Karplus-Strong string synthesis algorithm. He taught

VLSI Very large-scale integration (VLSI) is the process of creating an integrated circuit (IC) by combining millions or billions of MOS transistors onto a single chip. VLSI began in the 1970s when MOS integrated circuit (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) c ...

design and computer engineering for several years, helping create the Computer Engineering Department at

. He made some contributions to VLSI

CAD Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computers (or ) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design. This software is used to increase the productivity of the designer, improve the quality of design, improve co ...

, particularly to

logic minimization Logic optimization is a process of finding an equivalent representation of the specified logic circuit under one or more specified constraints. This process is a part of a logic synthesis applied in digital electronics and integrated circuit de ...

, where he invented the if-then-else DAG (a generalization of the

binary decision diagram In computer science, a binary decision diagram (BDD) or branching program is a data structure that is used to represent a Boolean function. On a more abstract level, BDDs can be considered as a compressed representation of sets or relations. Un ...

) and a canonical form for it, before switching to

protein structure prediction Protein structure prediction is the inference of the three-dimensional structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence—that is, the prediction of its secondary and tertiary structure from primary structure. Structure prediction is different ...

and

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

in 1995. He has participated in

CASP Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP), sometimes called Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. CASP prov ...

(Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction) since CASP2 in 1996, and has been invited to present papers at CASP2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. He served on th
Board of Directors
for the

International Society for Computational Biology The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is a scholarly society for researchers in computational biology and bioinformatics. The society was founded in 1997 to provide a stable financial home for the Intelligent Systems for Mole ...

January 2005—Jan 2011. Karplus has long been a bicycle advocate. In 1994, the

League of American Bicyclists The League of American Bicyclists (LAB), officially the League of American Wheelmen, is a membership organization that promotes cycling for fun, fitness and transportation through advocacy and education. A Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization ...

gave him the Phyllis W. Harmon Volunteer-of-the-Year Award. In 2001, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by

Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission Santa Claus, also known as Father Christmas, Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Kris Kringle, or simply Santa, is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring children gifts during the late evening and overnight ...

for long standing commitment to improving bicycle transportation in Santa Cruz County. He was also one of the founding members o
People Power
a bicycle advocacy group in Santa Cruz.

References

External links

Home page for Kevin Karplus

{{DEFAULTSORT:Karplus, Kevin University of California, Santa Cruz faculty Stanford University alumni 1954 births Living people