Dr. Robert Gross received a B.S. in Engineering Science and an MS. in Biomedical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) during which time his research focused on the mechanism of catch muscle contraction and force generation in the clam. He completed his Ph.D. in Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, Md.) with Dr. Michael Beer, developing a method for extracting RNA polymerases from Drosophila and studying their behavior. His Postdoctoral studies were under Dr. Ru Chih Huang in the Biology Department at Johns Hopkins, and involved the isolation and characterization of a set of small chromatin associated RNAs, later to be called snRNAs. After studying heat shock and its effect on RNA splicing for 18 years at Dartmouth, Dr. Gross' research now focuses on computational molecular biology. In particular, he is interested in understanding gene regulation, developing new ways to search genome databases for regulatory sequence motifs, and in analyzing DNA microarray data. Currently, Dr. Gross is an Associate Professor of Biological Sciences at Dartmouth and is Director of the Center for Biological and Biomedical Computing (CBBC).