Emeritus Professor Hagai Meirovitch returned to the University of Pittsburgh for a visit last week. 

Meirovitch is a founding member of the department who arrived in 2001, when the Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics was founded by Ivet Bahar. The center would later become the Department of Computational and Systems Biology. 

Building a center from the ground up required a lot of time and energy. Meirovitch recalls a time when the center was a series of empty rooms. He and Bahar got to work applying for grants for computers and recruiting new members. 

“We became larger and larger and accumulated new computers,” Meirovitch said. “The department is an organ that is constantly breathing and changing.” 

Meirovitch retired from Pitt in 2012. During his tenure at the Department of Computational and Systems Biology, his research focused on computer simulations, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, and entropy. He says the highlight of his career was calculating entropy with computer simulations, a method that can be applied to drug design.  

While in Pittsburgh for a visit, Meirovitch had the chance to see how the department has grown and changed over the years. 

“I see many new people, so I think this a good sign that the place is growing and breathing,” he said. “I see progress and a future for the department that we worked to create.”