Sandor Pongor - Curriculum Vitae#

Short CV

Education

• Technical University, Budapest, Hungary, Diploma in Chemical Engineering (biological technologies), 1974
• Technical University, Budapest, Hungary, PhD in Biochemistry, 1978
• Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, Doctor of Sciences, 1989
• Szent István University, Gödöllö, Hungary, Doctor Habilitatus, 1998

Career History

• Since 1990, Senior Scientist and Group Leader of the Protein Structure and Bioinformatics Laboratory of the ICGEB, Trieste.
• 1989-1994 Director, Institute for Biochemistry and Protein Research, Agricultural Biotechnology Center, Gödöllö, Hungary
• 1986-1990 Research Director, Agricultural Biotechnology Center, Gödöllö, Hungary
• 1984-1985 Research Associate, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
• 1982-1983 Research Associate, Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA
• 1974-1981 Ph.D. Student, Research Associate, Institute of Enzymology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary

Teaching Activity

• Since 1992, organizer of the summer course: Bioinformatics: Computer Methods in Molecular Biology as well as other practical and theoretical courses in bioinformatics (over 1100 students since 1992).
• Since 2001, Szent-Györgyi Professor in Bioinformatics, Biological Research Center and University of Szeged, Hungary.
• Since 1997 lecturer in Proteome Boinformatics in the PhD Course of Molecular Genetics of the International School for Advanced Studies (ISAS) of Trieste, Italy.
• Since 1988 Adjunct Professor in Biochemistry, Szent István University, Gödöllö, Hungary.

Scientific Activity

His research focuses on the principles of stability and specificity in molecular recognition systems. The first area of interest is bioinformatics (evolution of network models, classification by machine learning techniques, databases). The second area of interest concerns the specificity of protein/DNA interactions, disulfide bond formation with particular reference to signal transduction events such as the Notch signalling network, as well as to pharmaceutical applications. On the theoretical side, his Group is interested in the problems of scientific knowledge-representation as applied to genome, proteome and structural analysis.
Over 200 papers published, 2 books and 4 patents.

Other Activities

• Member of Academia Europaea
• Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Member of the International Society of Computational Biology
• Member of the Italian and the Hungarian Bioinformatics Societies. His Group operates the bioinformatics and the peptide synthesis core facilities at ICGEB, Trieste
• Member of the Editorial Board of Databases (Oxford University Press)
• 1996-1997 Chairman, European Molecular Biology Network (EMBnet)