Christopher B. Burge is the Whitehead Career Development Associate Professor of Biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

.

He completed his Bachelor of Science

Bachelor of Science

A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...

 at Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

 in 1990, and continued graduate studies in computational biology

Computational biology

Computational biology involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems...

 at Stanford University, gaining his PhD

PHD

PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...

 in 1997 under the supervision of Samuel Karlin

Samuel Karlin

Samuel Karlin was an American mathematician at Stanford University in the late 20th century.Karlin was born in Yanova, Poland and immigrated to Chicago as a child...

. During his time at Stanford he was responsible for developing algorithms for GENSCAN

GENSCAN

GENSCAN is an program to identify complete gene structures in genomic DNA. It is a GHMM-based program that can be used to predict the location of genes and their exon-intron boundaries in genomic sequences from a variety of organisms...

 used in gene prediction

Gene prediction

In computational biology gene prediction or gene finding refers to the process of identifying the regions of genomic DNA that encode genes. This includes protein-coding genes as well as RNA genes, but may also include prediction of other functional elements such as regulatory regions...

 for example the initial analysis of the Human Genome Project

Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional...

. From 1997 to 1999 he worked as a postdoc in the laboratory of Phillip Allen Sharp

Phillip Allen Sharp

Phillip Allen Sharp is an American geneticist and molecular biologist who co-discovered RNA splicing. He shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Richard J...

. In 2001 he was awarded the Overton Prize

Overton Prize

The Overton Prize is an annual prize is awarded for outstanding accomplishment to a scientist in the early to mid stage of his or her career who has already made a significant contribution to the field of computational biology either through research, education, service, or a combination of the three...

 for Computational Biology by the International Society for Computational Biology.

His current research interests include genomics

Genomics

Genomics is a discipline in genetics concerning the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis,...

, RNA splicing

RNA splicing

In molecular biology and genetics, splicing is a modification of an RNA after transcription, in which introns are removed and exons are joined. This is needed for the typical eukaryotic messenger RNA before it can be used to produce a correct protein through translation...

 and microRNA regulation.