Lila Kari

Lila Kari is Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She received her M.Sc. in 1987 from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and her Ph.D. in 1991 for her thesis "On Insertions and Deletions in Formal Languages", for which she received the Rolf Nevanlinna doctoral thesis award for the best doctoral thesis in mathematics thesis in Finland. Author of more than 250 peer reviewed articles, Professor Kari is a recognized expert in the area of biomolecular computation, that is using biological, chemical and other natural systems to perform computations. In 2015 she received the Rozenberg Tulip Award for the DNA Computer Scientist of the Year, awarded at the 21st International conference on DNA Computing and Molecular Programming, Harvard University, USA, award that recognizes a prominent scientist who has shown continuous contributions, pioneering, original contributions, and who has influenced the development of the field. Her current research focusses on comparative genomics, biodiversity informatics, as well as theoretical aspects of bioinformation and biocomputation.