Bio

Bonnie Hurwitz  has been named as the new director of the Bioinformatics Research Center (BRC), effective Aug. 1.

As BRC director, Hurwitz will lead research and education activities for a center with more than 20 faculty and staff across multiple colleges. She will be a prominent voice for the continuing role of bioinformatics, computational biology and molecular data sciences in modern STEM research and training. Among her priorities will be to build upon the center’s strong partnerships with industry, government and academic organizations in Research Triangle Park, as well as engage and identify synergies with other colleges and units across the university. Bonnie will also serve as a faculty member in our Department of Biological Sciences.

Hurwitz has worked as an interdisciplinary computational biologist for two decades in industry and academia. Her research on the Earth and human microbiome incorporates large-scale datasets, high-throughput computing and big data analytics to answer questions in systems biology. She is particularly interested in how viruses re-engineer a host’s metabolism and the implications on host-driven processes. Before joining the faculty at Arizona in 2012, she held positions at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Third Wave Technologies, Accelrys and Incyte Genomics.

Hurwitz’s awards and honors include being named an Amazon Scholar from 2021 to 2024 and a Scholar at Hewlett Packard Enterprise in 2024. Her journal articles have been recognized as highly accessed publications in FEMS Microbiology Reviews and BMC Medicine. She is also a fellow at the University of Arizona’s BIO5 Institute.

Hurwitz received her bachelor’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and her Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Arizona.

Publications

• Draft genome sequence of endometrial Alloscardovia omnicolens strain Y28 identified in endometrial cancer , Microbiology Resource Announcements (2026)
• Fostering open science literacy through an asynchronous CURE: challenges and strategies of a fully online student research experience , Frontiers in Education (2026)
• Uniqsketch analysis notebooks, file, and figures , Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2026)
• Uniqsketch analysis notebooks, file, and figures , Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2026)
• Draft genome sequence of endometrial Schaalia turicensis strain R31 from a patient with adenomyosis , Microbiology Resource Announcements (2025)
• The Aggregated Gut Viral Catalogue (AVrC): A unified resource for exploring the viral diversity of the human gut , PLoS Computational Biology (2025)
• The Aggregated Gut Viral Catalogue (AVrC): A Unified Resource for Exploring the Viral Diversity of the Human Gut , bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2024)
• Comparison of k-mer-based de novo comparative metagenomic tools and approaches , Microbiome Research Reports (2023)
• Evaluation of computational phage detection tools for metagenomic datasets , Frontiers in Microbiology (2023)
• Network analysis reveals dysregulated functional patterns in type II diabetic skin , Scientific Reports (2022)