Homayoun Valafar

Dr. Homayoun Valafar's core research bridges the fields of AI/Machine Learning and Medicine. He has a highly mathematical background and is an expert in Machine Learning, AI, and several areas of bioinformatics/computational biology. He has extensive experience in conducting world-class research, leading diverse teams, acquiring and managing multi-million dollar grants, and disseminating results. Nearly all of Dr. Valafar's research has included the need to manage and collaborate with highly interdisciplinary teams. Throughout his career, he has maintained steady collaborations with biologists, biochemists, physicians, clinicians, and other scientists whose work directly benefits from his research. In addition, he has been the primary advisor of 9 postdoctoral fellows, 25 Ph.D. Students, 15 M.S. Students, and over 50 undergraduate students in a variety of disciplines. He has a proven track record in acquiring funding and supervising multi-million dollar projects. Since his arrival at UofSC in 2004, Dr. Valafar has been the PI or co-PI on 30 grants funded by NSF, NIH, SCRA, and the USC Research Foundation (combined funds totaling close to $100M). Five of these grants are currently active with funds totaling nearly $40M. In addition to the funded projects, his current pending grant proposals to NSF and NIH as a PI or Co-PI are approximately $60.5M. He also has a proven track record of producing high-quality results. He currently holds one non-provisional patent, one provisional patent, has authored or co-authored over 165 refereed papers in some of the best journals (50 journal articles with impact factors in the range of 2 to 14.6) in his area, and presented at the most prestigious conferences. Such success is widely recognized. He has been invited to give more than 40 lectures at national and international venues such as Gordon Research Conference. He was a 16-year member of the organizing and reviewing committee for the Annual International Conference of Parallel Distributed Processing Techniques and Application (PDPTA). He was the Editor of the Proceedings of the International Conference on Mathematics and Engineering Techniques in Medicine and Biological Sciences (METMBS) for 5 years. He was also a 6-year council member of the South Carolina Academy of Sciences. In addition, he was awarded the NSF Career Award in 2007, the CEC Young Investigator Award in 2008, the CSE Outstanding Senior Researcher Award in 2018, the Two Thumbs Up Award in 2018, and the CSE Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award in 2019.