Cleary Awarded Shibulal Family Career Development Professorship
The Faculty of Computing & Data Science (CDS) is pleased to announce that CDS Assistant Professor Brian Cleary has been named the 2024-25 Shibulal Family Career Development Professor in Computing & Data Sciences. This prestigious honor is awarded annually to several junior faculty at Boston University who have demonstrated exceptional potential as future leaders in their field.
Cleary, who also holds appointments in biology and biomedical engineering, investigates the nature of molecular, cellular, and tissue processes, by integrating computational and algorithmic tools into biology research. Called “a deep thinker and fearless leader-in-the-making,” by his nominator, Azer Bestavros, W. F. Warren Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and associate provost of BU’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, Cleary “truly embraces the integrative, cross-cutting culture of CDS and embodies the qualities needed to be a leading innovator in data science.”
The professorship, established by BU Trustee S. D. Shibulal (MET’88), honors faculty with exceptional records and notable scholarly potential. Recipients are acknowledged for their extraordinary achievements in their fields, innovative research and teaching methods, and impactful, original scholarship that could transform their disciplines.
“It is an honor to have my past work and the potential for our ongoing research recognized with this award! I feel very fortunate to have this recognition and support,” Cleary said.
Cleary’s work will focus on developing theory and computational-experimental methods to identify basic units of organization in cells and tissues to better understand how they evolve, change throughout development, and go awry in disease. The impact, he adds, is to obtain a better understanding of the nature of complex living systems.
“Data science is fundamental to these efforts since living systems are a product of complex historical processes, and uncovering the organizing principles of such systems requires (in part) exploratory analysis of data arising from large-scale observation and experimentation,” Cleary said.
Bestavros described Cleary as a “passionate thought leader” and a “stellar researcher,” highlighting Cleary's dedication and expertise in their field.
“Through a truly interdisciplinary mixture of bench-side and computational research, he applies paired computational and experimental methods to efficiently study the spatial organization of gene expression in tissues; to develop and connect emerging methods in machine learning with experimental design and new systems-level theories of cellular and tissue physiology.
Nominations are submitted by academic deans, and awardees are selected by the Office of the Provost. Each appointment includes three years of financial support for the recipients’ salaries and scholarships.