Daniel Janies, Ph.D.

In 2012, Daniel Janies joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte as The Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Bioinformatics and Genomics and Director of Bioinformatics Research. He is also the current co-interim director of the Charlotte Visualization Center. Dr. Janies received a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Biology from the University of Michigan in 1988 and a Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Florida in 1995. Dr. Janies worked as a postdoctoral fellow (1996 -1999) and a principal investigator (2000-2002) at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City where he led a team that, using off-the-shelf PC components, built one of the world’s largest computing clusters in 2001. More recently, Dr. Janies was a tenured faculty member in the College of Medicine at the Ohio State University. Dr. Janies has served as a national principal investigator in the Tree of Life program of the National Science Foundation. Dr. Janies current awards include DoD sponsored work to develop visual analytic applications to understand the spread of pathogens. He has developed the theory and practice of mapping pathogen genetic data in concert with geography and host animals. His results are akin to weather maps for infectious diseases that allow public health scientists to visualize when and where pathogens jump from animals to humans and evolve to resist drugs. Dr. Janies has advised the White House, the Pentagon, the Interagency Risk Assessment Consortium, and testified to both Houses of Congress on emerging infectious diseases.