University announces Bloomberg Professors

The University announced the creation of four new Bloomberg Distinguished Professor positions, which emphasize cross-departmental collaboration, made possible by a $350 million gift from Michael J. Bloomberg, former New York City mayor and Hopkins alumnus.

The new appointments increase the number of Bloomberg Distinguished Professors to 10; the University plans to have 50 Bloomberg professors within four years.

Arturo Casadevall is an AIDS and fungus researcher focusing on the role of Cryptococcus neoformans, a pathogenic yeast, in the deaths of many AIDS patients in the 1980s. He now serves as chair of the department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and wants to use his new position to focus on understanding how the immune system fights diseases and how microbes interact with it.

Christopher Chute is a former epidemiologist and statistician. He previously worked at the Mayo Clinic for 27 years and is now the chief health research information officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine. Chute cited a desire to tackle new challenges as his reason for taking the position.

Steven Salzberg is a computational biologist and pioneer in genetic computing who began his career as an assistant professor in computer science at Hopkins. One of his goals is to integrate and create databases of DNA sequences and RNA expression levels to streamline access and customize patient treatment. Salzberg is currently teaching a new graduate-level course entitled “Computational Personal Geonomics.” He has a science blog on forbes.com that has more than 1.5 million views per year.

Alexander Szalay, director of the Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science at Johns Hopkins, started his career as an astronomer but now works predominantly with data and supercomputer access for radiation, oncology and genomics. Szalay will be teaching a new class on data science with particular attention to statistics, computer science and basic sciences. The class will emphasize skills that he believes will be paramount to the next generation of scientists.

The appointments of Casadevall, Chute, Salzberg and Szalay as Bloomberg Distinguished Professors was announced via email on Monday.

Past Bloomberg Distinguished Professors have included Peter Agre, Carol Greider, Kathryn Edin, Stephen Morgan and Kathleen Sutcliffe.