Full Biosketch

Dr. Christina Boucher is a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida. She has authored over 170 publications in bioinformatics, including more than two dozen focused on succinct data structures and sequence alignment. Reflecting her impact in the field, she has delivered keynote addresses at major international venues, including WABI 2025, MemPanG Conference 2023, Genome Informatics 2022, the International Genome Graphs Symposium 2022, PANGAIA Seminar 2022, HiCOMB 2022, IABD 2019, FAB 2018, RECOMB-SEQ 2016, and the ECCB 2016 Workshop on Pan-Genomics. She is also a recipient of the ESA 2016 Best Paper Award.  Dr. Boucher leads the development and long-term maintenance of several influential bioinformatics tools, including Prefix-free Parsing,Moni Align, MEGARes and AMRPlusPlus. Her research program is highly collaborative, integrating expertise from microbiology, veterinary medicine, epidemiology, public health, and clinical sciences. She has also served in numerous leadership roles within the research community, including Program Committee Chair or Track Chair for ISMB 2024, SPIRE 2020, RECOMB-SEQ 2019, and ACM-BCB 2018. She is currently a member of the RECOMB-SEQ Steering Committee and the ISMB HiTSeq Organizing Committee, and was appointed as a Standing Member of the NIH BDMA Study Section in 2021 for a six-year term.

Beyond her research, Dr. Boucher is deeply committed to broadening participation and diversity in bioinformatics education. She has served on the University of Florida’s Implicit Bias Committee, participated as a panelist for the NSF-funded ACM BCB 2015 Women in Bioinformatics meeting, acted as faculty advisor for an ACM-W chapter, and contributed to the Diversity Committee for more than three years. Her dedication to pedagogy is also reflected in receiving a Teaching Fellowship from The Institute for Learning and Teaching (TILT) for course redevelopment, and she has served on the advisory committee for an NSF Research Traineeship Program.

Dr. Boucher earned her Ph.D. from the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in 2010. During her doctoral studies, she received the NSERC Doctoral Award, the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship, and the David R. Cheriton Graduate Scholarship. Following her Ph.D., she was awarded an NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship, which she held at the University of California, San Diego, under the mentorship of Pavel Pevzner.