Maricel Kann

Maricel Kann is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), with an affiliate appointment in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Department. Her research integrates computational biology, bioinformatics, and systems biology to understand protein networks, domain-level functional impacts of genetic variants, and molecular mechanisms in diseases such as cancer.

• Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 2001
• Postdoctorate, National Center for Biotechnology Information, NIH, 2007

Her research focuses on developing computational methodologies to analyze protein domain interactions, prioritize disease-associated variants, and derive molecular signatures of cancers like prostate and breast cancer. She leads projects such as DMDM (Domain Mapping of Disease Mutations) and EMU (Extractor of Mutations), which enable domain-level mutation analysis and text-mining of disease-related variants. Her work emphasizes interdisciplinary collaboration with experimentalists and the integration of genomic, functional, and evolutionary data.

Her recent publications reflect a strong trend in domain-centric cancer genomics, statistical modeling of mutation hotspots, and computational frameworks for interpreting non-coding variants and personal genomes. She has contributed significantly to benchmarking in computational biology and the development of tools for translational bioinformatics.

• NCI Transition Career Development Award (K22) 2009-2012
• NIH Intramural Research Training Award 2002-2007
• NIH Fellows Award for Research Excellence 2003
• Susan Lipschutz Award for Women Graduate Students 1999
• Sloan Foundation Summer Graduate Fellowship 1998
• Graduate Fellowship of the Organization of the American States 1996-1998

Dr. Kann mentors numerous graduate and undergraduate students through projects like EMU and PINTT (Protein INteraction Text-mining Tool), fostering interdisciplinary training. She has served on editorial boards (e.g., Journal of Biomedical Informatics), advisory committees (PubMedCentral, UniProt), and as organizer for major conferences in bioinformatics. She currently teaches BIOL 495: Seminar in Bioinformatics and is actively recruiting Ph.D. students in computational biology and bioinformatics.

Her lab collaborates with researchers across institutions and is part of several interdisciplinary programs including the Chemistry and Biology Interface Program at UMBC and the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center. She is also involved with the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.