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Ehud Shapiro (Hebrew: àäåã ùôéøàý; born 1955) is a multi-disciplinary scientist, artist, entrepreneur and a Professor of Computer Science and Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. With international reputation, he made fundamental contributionsto many scientific disciplines. He was also an Internet pioneer, a successful Internet entrepreneur, and a pioneer and proponent of E-democracy. He is the founder of the Ba Rock Band and conceived its original artistic program. He is a winner of two ERC (European Research Council) Advanced Grants.
The guiding light for Ehud Shapiro's scientific endeavors was the philosophy of science of Karl Popper, with which he became acquainted through a high-school project supervised by Moshe Kroy from the Department of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University. He completed his undergraduate studies in Tel Aviv University in Mathematics and Philosophy with distinction (1977-1979); and obtained his his Doctor of Philosophy degree Computer Science from Yale Uiversity (1979-1982).His PhD work with Dana Angluin in Computer Science at Yale university attempted to provide an algorithmic interpretation to Popper's philosophical approach to scientific discovery, resulting in both a computer system for the inference of logical theories from facts and a methodology for program debugging, developed using the programming language Prolog. His thesis, "Algorithmic Program Debugging", was published by MIT Press as a 1982 ACM Distinguished Dissertation, followed in 1986 by "The Art of Prolog", a textbook co-authored with Leon Sterling.
Coming to the Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 1982 as a post-doctoral fellow, Shud Shapiro was inspired by the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Systems project to invent a high-level programming language for parallel and distributed computer systems, named Concurrent Prolog. A two-volume book on Concurrent Prolog and related work was published by MIT Press in 1987. Shapiro's work had a decisive influence on the strategic direction of the Japanese national project, and he cooperated closely with the project throughout its 10-years duration.
In 1993, Shapiro took leave of absence from his tenured position at Weizmann to found Ubique Ltd. (and serve as its CEO), an Israeli Internet software pioneer. Building on Concurrent Prolog, Ubique developed "Virtual Places", a precursor to today's broadly-used Instant Messaging systems. Ubique was sold to America Online in 1995, and following a management buy out in 1997 was sold again to IBM in 1998, where it continues to develop SameTime, IBM's leading Instant Messaging product based on Ubique's technology.
Preparing for return to academia, Ehud Shapiro ventured into self-study of molecular biology. He attempted to build a computer from biological molecules, guided by a vision of "A Doctor in a Cell": A biomolecular computer that operates inside the living body, programmed with medical knowledge to diagnose diseases and produce the requisite drugs. Lacking experience in molecular biology, Shapiro realized his first design for a molecular computer as a LEGO-like mechanical device built using 3D stereolithography, which was patented upon his return to Weizmann in 1998. During the last decade and a half, Shapiro’s lab have designed and successfully implemented various molecular computing devices.
In 2004, Prof. Shapiro also designed an effective method of synthesizing error-free DNA molecules from error-prone building blocks. In 2011, Prof. Shapiro founded the CADMAD consortium: The CADMAD technological platform aims to deliver a revolution in DNA processing analogous to the revolution text editing underwent with the introduction of electronic text editors.
In 2005, Prof. Shapiro presented a vision of the next grand challenge in Human biology: To uncover the Human cell lineage tree. Inside all of us is a cell lineage tree – the history of how our body grows from a single cell (the fertilized egg) to 100 trillion cells. The biological and biomedical impact of such a success could be of a magnitude similar, if not larger than that of the Human Genome Project. In his TEDxTel-Aviv talk "Uncovering The Human Cell Lineage Tree – The next grand scientific challenge"[7] Prof. Shapiro described the system and results obtained with it so far, and a proposal for a FET Flagship project "Human Cell Lineage Flagship initiative" for uncovering the Human cell lineage tree in health and disease. |
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Ehud Shapiro studied singing at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance (2006-2010) with Agnes Masini and Zvi Zemel, and later with Marina Levit. He participated in several productions of the Academy including Purcell's Fairy Queen as a soloist. He is the founder of the Ba Rock Band and conceived its original artistic program. He performed as Uberto in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La Serva Pardona, and Shlendrian in J.S. Bach's Coffee Cantata (BWV 211), both with contemporary directing by Shirit Lee Weiss, and as a soloist in J.S. Bach's Peasant Cantata (BWV 212) with the Kibbutzim Youth Orchestra. He currently lives in ives in Abu Ghosh, Israel. |
