Michael Gribskov is currently a professor of Biological Sciences and Computer Science at Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, U.S., is the flagship university of the six-campus Purdue University system. Purdue was founded on May 6, 1869, as a land-grant university when the Indiana General Assembly, taking advantage of the Morrill Act, accepted a donation of land and...

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In 1979, Gribskov graduated from Oregon State University

Oregon State University

Oregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...

, with a Bachelor in Science Honors degree in Biochemistry and Biophysics. Later in 1985, he finished his PHD degree in Molecular Biology from University of Wisconsin–Madison.


He has served as President of the International Society for Computational Biology, and his faculty page states that he is the chair of the Protein Information Resource

Protein Information Resource

The Protein Information Resource , located at Georgetown University Medical Center , is an integrated public bioinformatics resource to support genomic and proteomic research, and scientific studies-History:...

 Scientific Oversight and Advisory Board as well as on the editorial boards of the journals Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...

, Journal of Computational Biology and Chemistry, and Journal of Molecular Microbiology & Biotechnology.

Year	Position
1979	B.S. with Honors in Biochemistry and Biophysics Oregon State University
1979–1984	NIH predoctoral training grant University of Wisconsin-Madison
1985	Ph.D. in Molecular Biology University of Wisconsin-Madison
1985–1987	American Cancer Society post-doctoral fellowship University of California - Los Angeles
1988–1992	Scientist Associate National Cancer Institute--FCRDC
1992	Staff Scientist San Diego Supercomputer Center
1993–1996	Senior Staff Scientist San Diego Supercomputer Center
1993–1999	Adjunct Assistant Professor of Biology University of California, San Diego
1994–1997	Principal Investigator Structural Queries on Nucleic Acid Databases
1999–2003	Adjunct Associate Professor of Biology University of California, San Diego
2004–present	Professor of Biological Science and Computer Science Purdue University

Significant Algorithm

The most important algorithm Prof Gribskov has contributed is documented in the article - Profile analysis: Detection of distantly related proteins. Profile analysis is a method for detecting distantly related proteins by sequence comparison. A profile is a position specific scoring matrix, and it is created from a group of sequences previously aligned (probe). The similarity of any other sequence (target) (one or more than one) to the prob can be tested by comparing the target to the file using dynamic programming. This algorithm consists of two steps. The first step is the generation of the profile using software PROFWARE, which makes use of an existing alignment (probe) based on sequence similarity or the corresponding 3D structure to generate a profile. The second step is the comparison of the profile with a database of sequences or a single sequence. In this step, based on the profile generated, the target sequence or group of sequences could be aligned using PROFINAL, dynamic programming is used in the alignment.