Dr. Valafar obtained his B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Michigan Technological University followed by MS and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering from Purdue University. He has been an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Full Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina since 2004. He currently serves as the Chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Valafar’s research is at the intersection of Computing, Biology, Biophysics, and Mathematics disciplines. In particular, his research is focused in the domain of Healthcare at the molecular and population level. Dr. Valafar’s has established a research track in Bioinformatics, Computational Biology, and Computational Medicine. He has integrated Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques in numerous studies including Sickle Cell Anemia, Vascular diseases, and Human Activity Recognition using smartwatches.