About Luay

Luay K. Nakhleh

Luay Nakhleh was born to an Arab (Palestinian), Christian (Roman Catholic), Israeli family in 1974. To add to the complexity, he married a Japanese woman. Their two children, Brooke and Dylan, are confused about their ancestry. In 1997, he moved to the United States to pursue his graduate studies. He is a citizen of both Israel and the United States. 

Nakhleh received a BSc degree in Computer Science from the Technion (Israel) in 1996, a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University in 1998, and a PhD degree in Computer Science from UT Austin in May 2004 (Advisor: Prof. Tandy Warnow). While at UT Austin, He received the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, the Bert Kay Dissertation Award, the Texas Excellence Teaching Award and the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.

Nakhleh joined the Computer Science department at Rice University as an Assistant Professor in July 2004, and was promoted to Associate Professor, with tenure, effective July 2010, and to Full Professor effective July 2016. From January 2017 to December 2020, he served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science at Rice University. As of January 2021, he serves as the William and Stephanie Sick Dean for the George R. Brown School of Engineering and Computing at Rice University.

While at Rice, he received the DOE CAREER award in 2006, the NSF CAREER award in 2009, the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching award in 2009, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2010 (in the Molecular Biology category), a John P. Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2012 (in the Organismic Biology and Ecology category), the Teaching and Research Excellence Award from the School of Engineering at Rice University in 2015, and the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Adviser Award from the School of Engineering at Rice University in 2018. In 2019, he received the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching–the university’s most prestigious teaching award. In 2020 and 2024, he received the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching. In 2023, he was elected Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB). In 2024, he was elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

Research Areas

Combinatorial optimization, statistical inference, and their applications to biological problems. Phylogenomics and population genomics. Evolution of biological networks (protein interaction networks and regulatory networks). Modeling and analysis of biological networks (metabolic and regulatory networks)

Honors & Awards

2024: Fellow, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)

2024: George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University

2023: Fellow, International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)

2020: George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University

2019: George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Rice University

2018: Language, the flagship journal of the Linguistic Society of America, included our paper (Nakhleh, Ringe, and Warnow, Language 81(2): 382-420, 2005) as oneof the 20 best papers published in the journal in the 30-year period 1986-2016.

2018: The Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Adviser Award, Rice University

2018 – 2020: The J.S. Abercrombie Endowed Professorship, Rice University

2015: Teaching and Research Excellence Award, Rice University

2012: John P. Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

2010: Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

2009: Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Award, Rice University

2009: NSF Career Award, National Science Foundation

2006: DOE Career Award, U.S Department of Energy

2005: Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award, The University of Texas at Austin

2005: Bert Kay Dissertation Award, The University of Texas at Austin

2001: Texas Excellence Teaching Award, The University of Texas at Austin.

2000: Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award,The University of Texas at Austin