Nir Friedman (born 1967) is an Israeli

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

at the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI; he, הַאוּנִיבֶרְסִיטָה הַעִבְרִית בִּירוּשָׁלַיִם) is a public research university based in Jerusalem, Israel. Co-founded by Albert Einstein and Dr. Chaim Weiz ...

. His research combines

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

and

Statistical Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

with

Systems Biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological syst ...

, specifically in the fields of

Gene Regulation Regulation of gene expression, or gene regulation, includes a wide range of mechanisms that are used by cells to increase or decrease the production of specific gene products (protein or RNA). Sophisticated programs of gene expression are wide ...

Transcription Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...

and

Chromatin Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells. The primary function is to package long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important roles in r ...

Education and research

Friedman earned his B.Sc degree from

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

(1987) and his M.Sc from the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli unive ...

(1992). In 1997, he completed his Ph.D. at

Stanford 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 considere ...

under the supervision of

Joseph Halpern Joseph Yehuda Halpern (born 1953) is an Israeli-American professor of computer science at Cornell University. Most of his research is on reasoning about knowledge and uncertainty. Biography Halpern graduated in 1975 from University of Toronto wi ...

, in the field of

Artificial Intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

. After some

postdoctoral A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to p ...

work at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

, he accepted a faculty position at the School of Computer Science, the

. His highly cited research includes work on Bayesian network classifiers (with Danny Geiger and Moises Goldszmidt), Bayesian Structural EM, and the use of

Bayesian Thomas Bayes (/beɪz/; c. 1701 – 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher, and Presbyterian minister. Bayesian () refers either to a range of concepts and approaches that relate to statistical methods based on Bayes' theorem, or a followe ...

methods to analyzing

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. The ...

data (with Aviv Regev,

Dana Pe'er Dana Pe'er (born 1971), Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute is a researcher in computational systems biology. A Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator since 2021, she was prev ...

Eran Segal Eran Segal ( he, ערן סגל; born 15 November 1973) is a computational biologist professor at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He works on developing quantitative models for all levels of gene regulation, including transcription, chromatin, a ...

Daphne Koller Daphne Koller ( he, דפנה קולר; born August 27, 1968) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. She was a professor in the department of computer science at Stanford University and a MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient. She is one o ...

and

David Botstein David Botstein (born September 8, 1942) is an American biologist serving as the chief scientific officer of Calico. He served as the director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University from 2003 to 2013, where ...

). More recent works focus on Probabilistic Graphical Models, reconstructing Regulatory Networks,

Genetic Interactions Epistasis is a phenomenon in genetics in which the effect of a gene mutation is dependent on the presence or absence of mutations in one or more other genes, respectively termed modifier genes. In other words, the effect of the mutation is dep ...

, and the role of

in Transcriptional Regulation (with Oliver Rando) In 2009, Friedman and Koller published a textbook on Probabilistic Graphical Models. Later that year, he joined the Institute of Life Sciences, and opened an experimental lab where he uses advanced robotic tools to study transcriptional regulation in the yeast

Saccharomyces cerevisiae ''Saccharomyces cerevisiae'' () (brewer's yeast or baker's yeast) is a species of yeast (single-celled fungus microorganisms). The species has been instrumental in winemaking, baking, and brewing since ancient times. It is believed to have been o ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Friedman, Nir Living people Israeli bioinformaticians Systems biologists 1967 births Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology