Biography:Luay Nakhleh

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Short description: Palestinian-Israeli-American computer scientist
Luay K. Nakhleh
William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering
Assumed office
January 1, 2021
Preceded byReginald DesRoches
Personal details
Born (1974-05-08) May 8, 1974 (age 52)
Israel
CitizenshipIsrael
United States
EducationBSc, 1996, Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
MSc, Texas A&M University
PhD, University of Texas at Austin

Luay K. Nakhleh (Arabic: لؤي نخله; born May 8, 1974) is a Palestinian-Israeli-American computer scientist and computational biologist. He is the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering at Rice University. Nakhleh's research is on computational and statistical approaches to phylogenomics and comparative genomics.

Early life and education

Nakhleh was born on May 8, 1974[1][2] to a Christian Palestinian family in Israel.[3] His grandfather Elias was the first Israeli-Arab to be named Deputy Speaker of the Knesset.[4] As his highschool did not own a computer, Nakhleh spent three years taking classes in computer science before being accepted into the Israel Institute of Technology.[5] After earning his Bachelor of Science degree, Nakhleh spent a year as a highschool teacher.[6] He then moved to the United States for his postgraduate studies.[5] Nakhleh earned a master's degree in computer science from Texas A&M University in 1998, and a PhD degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin in 2004.[3] During his graduate studies, Nakhleh received a 2001 Texas Excellence Teaching Award,[7] 2003-04 James C. Browne Graduate Fellowship, and 2005 Bert Kay Dissertation Award.[8]

Career

Following his PhD, Nakhleh remained in Texas and became an assistant professor of computer science at Rice University in July 2004.[3] His early work at Rice focused on creating PhyloNet, an online tool for analyzing, reconstructing, and evaluating reticulate phylogenetic networks.[9] He also collaborated on using language data to elucidate the (reticulate) evolutionary history of the Indo-European languages.[10] His co-authored paper on perfect phylogenetic networks was included as one of the Linguistic Society of America's top 20 papers published in their flagship journal, Language.[11] He received a 2009 CAREER award from the National Science Foundation[12] and 2012 Guggenheim Fellowship to support his research on the evolution of biological networks.[13][14] While serving as chair of the Computer Science department in 2018, Nakhleh was promoted to J.S. Abercrombie Professor of Computer Science.[15] On January 1, 2021, Nakhleh became the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering.[16]

As Dean of Engineering, Nakhleh was also elected a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology,[17] American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering,[18] and American Association for the Advancement of Science.[19]

Personal life

Nakhleh and his wife Mika have two children together.[14] He holds both U.S. and Israeli citizenship.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Phylogenetic Networks". University of Texas at Austin. May 2004. p. 289. https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/f266b5c0-12e6-47f5-971e-79d1e1116aa8/content. 
  2. ↑ "Nakhleh, Luay, 1974-". VIAF. https://viaf.org/en/viaf/9150999548429870635. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "About Luay". Rice University. https://nakhleh.rice.edu/. 
  4. ↑ "In Loving Memory of My Grandfather". Rice University. https://www.cs.rice.edu/~nakhleh/grand.html. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Tieding, Rylie (December 3, 2020). "Engineering former student appointed dean of engineering at Rice University". Texas A&M University. https://engineering.tamu.edu/news/2020/12/engineering-former-student-appointed-dean-of-engineering-at-rice-university.html. 
  6. ↑ Schoemann, Kendall (April 15, 2019). "Nakhleh: ‘I cannot imagine myself in a job where I cannot teach’". Rice University. https://news2.rice.edu/2019/04/15/nakhleh-i-cannot-imagine-myself-in-a-job-where-i-cannot-teach/. 
  7. ↑ "UT hands out teaching awards". Austin American-Statesman. January 15, 2001. https://www.newspapers.com/article/austin-american-statesman-ut-hands-out-t/173040771/. 
  8. ↑ "Graduate Student Awards". University of Texas at Austin. https://www.cs.utexas.edu/awards/graduate-student-awards. 
  9. ↑ Than, Cuong; Ruths, Derek; Nakhleh, Luay (July 28, 2008). "PhyloNet: a software package for analyzing and reconstructing reticulate evolutionary relationships". BMC Bioinformatics 9 (322). https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2105-9-322. Retrieved May 24, 2025. 
  10. ↑ Nakhleh, Luay; Ringe, Donald A.; Warnow, Tandy (June 2005). "Perfect Phylogenetic Networks: A New Methodology for Reconstructing the Evolutionary History of Natural Languages". Language 81 (2). https://muse.jhu.edu/article/184174. Retrieved May 24, 2025. 
  11. ↑ "The Best of Language- Volume 3 (1986-2016)". Linguistic Society of America. https://www.lsadc.org/content.asp?contentid=425. 
  12. ↑ Williams, Mike (July 8, 2009). "Nakhleh wins CAREER award". Rice University. https://news2.rice.edu/2009/07/08/computer-scientist-will-study-evolution-of-biological-networks/. 
  13. ↑ "Luay Nakhleh". Guggenheim Fellowship. https://www.gf.org/fellows/luay-nakhleh/. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Bishop, Julia (May 3, 2012). "Prof sees missing link". Houston Chronicle. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/houston-chronicle/20120503/285276024517452. 
  15. ↑ Kurp, Patrick (July 3, 2018). "Nakhleh, Vargas named endowed chairs". Rice University. https://cs.rice.edu/news/nakhleh-vargas-named-endowed-chairs. 
  16. ↑ Falk, Jeff (November 19, 2020). "Luay Nakhleh, Rice’s computer science chair, named dean of engineering school". Rice University. https://news2.rice.edu/2020/11/19/luay-nakhleh-rices-computer-science-chair-named-dean-of-engineering-school-2/. 
  17. ↑ "Luay Nakhleh elected International Society for Computational Biology fellow". Rice University. June 16, 2023. https://engineering.rice.edu/news/luay-nakhleh-elected-international-society-computational-biology-fellow. 
  18. ↑ Kurp, Patrick (March 25, 2025). "Luay Nakhleh elected American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering fellow". Rice University. https://engineering.rice.edu/news/luay-nakhleh-elected-american-institute-medical-and-biological-engineering-fellow. 
  19. ↑ "Rice’s DesRoches, Nakhleh, Marti elected as AAAS fellows". Rice University. March 27, 2025. https://news.rice.edu/news/2025/rices-desroches-nakhleh-marti-elected-aaas-fellows. 



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