Ivo Hofacker

Ivo Hofacker is a Professor at the University of Vienna, holding a double appointment in the Faculty of Chemistry and Faculty of Computer Science. He leads the Research Group Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry. His research focuses on computational biology, with emphasis on RNA bioinformatics (including the Vienna RNA Package for RNA structure prediction) and systems chemistry problems like combinatorial reaction networks.

His work spans RNA structure prediction, RNA-RNA interactions, and development of bioinformatics tools. Recent publications (2021-2024) explore RNA 3D modeling, evolutionary constraints, viral RNA structures, membrane protein optimization, and limitations of deep learning in RNA folding. His group actively develops methods integrating phylogenetic data, chemical probing, and biophysical analyses.

He collaborates extensively across disciplines, contributing to virology, microbiology, and biophysics. No awards or student advisees are explicitly mentioned in the source material.