Kevin Karplus

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title: "Kevin Karplus" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["university-of-california,-santa-cruz-faculty", "stanford-university-alumni", "1954-births", "living-people"] topic_path: "society/education" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Karplus" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::data[format=table title="Infobox scientist"]

Field	Value
image	Kevin_Karplus_2004_May_29_Seattle.JPG
alt	2004 photo of Kevin Karplus
caption	Karplus in 2004
name	Kevin John Karplus
birth_date
birth_place	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
nationality	American
field	Computer Science
work_institution	University of California, Santa Cruz
alma_mater	Stanford University
thesis_title	CHISEL: An Extension to the Programming Language C for VLSI Layout
thesis_url
thesis_year	1983
doctoral_advisor	Jeff Ullman
doctoral_students	Rachel Karchin
known_for	Karplus–Strong string synthesis, protein structure prediction particularly success in CASP
prizes	Excellence in Teaching Award UCSC Senate, 2004,
Herzog Mathematics Competition, 1973{{Cite web	url
::

| image = Kevin_Karplus_2004_May_29_Seattle.JPG | alt = 2004 photo of Kevin Karplus | caption= Karplus in 2004 | name = Kevin John Karplus | birth_date = | birth_place = Chicago, Illinois, U.S. | nationality = American | field = Computer Science | work_institution = University of California, Santa Cruz | alma_mater = Stanford University | thesis_title = CHISEL: An Extension to the Programming Language C for VLSI Layout | thesis_url = | thesis_year = 1983 | doctoral_advisor = Jeff Ullman | doctoral_students = Rachel Karchin | known_for = Karplus–Strong string synthesis, protein structure prediction particularly success in CASP | prizes = Excellence in Teaching Award UCSC Senate, 2004, Herzog Mathematics Competition, 1973

Kevin Karplus (born November 30, 1954) is a professor emeritus in the Biomolecular Engineering Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. He is best known for his work on the Karplus–Strong string synthesis algorithm he did as a computer science graduate student at Stanford University.

Career

Karplus taught Very-large-scale integration (VLSI) design and computer engineering for several years, helping create the Computer Engineering Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. He made some contributions to VLSI Computer-aided design (CAD), particularly to logic minimization, where he invented the if-then-else DAG (a generalization of the binary decision diagram) and a canonical form for it, before switching to protein structure prediction and bioinformatics in 1995. His doctoral students have included Rachel Karchin.

He has participated in CASP (Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction) since CASP2 in 1996, and has been invited to present papers at CASP2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.

He served on the Board of Directors for the International Society for Computational Biology from 2005 to 2011.

Personal life

Karplus has long been a bicycle advocate. In 1994, the League of American Bicyclists gave him the Phyllis W. Harmon Volunteer-of-the-Year Award. In 2001, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission for long standing commitment to improving bicycle transportation in Santa Cruz County. He was also one of the founding members of People Power, a bicycle advocacy group in Santa Cruz.

References

References

1. "Karplus and Ares receive excellence in teaching awards". The Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz.
2. "Previous Herzog Award Winners".
3. "Kevin John Karplus".
4. "Past Officers and Directors".
5. ''Bicycle USA'', Nov/Dec 1994, p.6
6. "Home".

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