The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) has named two professors from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science to the 2025 class of ISCB Fellows. Robert F. Murphy and Jian Ma will be honored, along with 17 other new fellows, at the 2025 Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology conference this summer in Liverpool, England.

ISCB introduced its fellows program in 2009 to recognize outstanding contributions in computational biology and bioinformatics. The program has since sought nominations from its members, with new fellows introduced annually at each Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology conference.

Murphy, the Ray and Stephanie Lane Professor of Computational Biology Emeritus, founded CMU's Ray and Stephanie Lane Computational Biology Department as well as the university's graduate program in automated science — the first of its kind in the world. Murphy's career focused on combining fluorescence-based cell measurement methods with quantitative and computational methods. His group was the first to apply machine learning methods to recognize all major subcellular patterns in fluorescence microscope images and demonstrated superior machine performance in interpreting these patterns compared to human visual interpretation. They also constructed the first system for building generative models of cell organization directly from images. Beginning in 2011, Murphy's group developed active machine learning methods for driving biomedical research campaigns, laying the foundation for establishing CMU's Cloud Laboratory. He is also an IEEE and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering fellow.

Ma, the current Ray and Stephanie Lane Professor of Computational Biology, advances AI and machine learning models to decode the intricate structure and function of human cells. His research addresses fundamental challenges in genome organization, single-cell epigenomics and spatial genomics — keys to understanding cellular heterogeneity in health and disease. Since joining CMU in 2016, Ma's lab has developed innovative approaches to map higher-order genome architecture and cellular spatial dynamics in complex tissues, with findings widely published in high-impact journals. His computational methods led to the establishment of an NIH center to study genome architecture through integrative approaches. His work has also laid the foundation for ongoing work in building cellular AI models to decode the molecular language of cells — a central focus of the recently launched AI4BIO Center at CMU. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2020 and was elected a 2022 American Association for the Advancement of Science fellow.

Learn more about the 2025 class of fellows on the ISCB website.