Mihai Pop, a professor of computer science and director of the University of Maryland Center of Excellence in Microbiome Sciences, was just named an MPower Professor, a prestigious honor that recognizes, incentivizes and fosters collaborations between faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.  

Pop is part of a cohort of seven faculty named as MPower Professors this year. To be considered for the MPower Professorship, faculty must demonstrate collaboration on strategic research that would be unattainable or difficult to achieve acting independently of one another and must embrace the mission of MPower—to collectively strengthen and serve the state of Maryland and its citizens.  

Each MPower Professor receives $150,000, allocated over three years, to apply to their salary or to support supplemental research activities.

“I’m deeply inspired by this incredible group of MPower Professors, who are not only dedicating themselves to solving some of the most complex problems facing society, but also embracing the power of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional collaboration,” said UMD President Darryll J. Pines. “By working together, we unlock new creative potential and develop innovative solutions that we couldn’t achieve alone.”

In addition to his leadership role in the microbiome center, Pop is the current director of University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and is a core faculty member in the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. His research focuses on the development of sequence assembly algorithms and analysis of genomic data sets. His lab developed widely used computational tools for the analysis of genomic and metagenomic data. Pop is globally recognized for his efforts to diversify the computer science and computational biology communities.