Cytoscape Wikihttp://www.cytoscape.org/people_photos/allan.jpg Allan Kuchinsky is a Principal Project Scientist in the Systems Biology group at Agilent Laboratories, the central research organization of Agilent Technologies. Current work centers on visualization and analysis of biomolecular networks. This involves the prototyping of biological network visualization tools and their usage in collaborations with external biomedical researchers. Current collaborations include research into cardiovascular disease (with Stanford University Reynolds Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center).
Along with Aditya Vailaya, Allan developed a meta-search tool which extracts biological associations from the scientific literature, released externally as a plugin to the Cytoscape network visualization and analysis software system. Allan has also been a contributor to the Cytoscape core system, in particular adding network editing functionality to Cytoscape and interfaces to protein-protein interaction databases.
Prior bioinformatics work at Agilent include an architecture for biological information extraction and representation and a software system for biological information organization and hypothesis formulation, which formed the basis of an Agilent bioinformatics product.
Allan joined Hewlett Packard 1978 as a member of technical staff in HP's General Systems Division. He initially worked on the Production Management/3000 and Materials Management/3000 software products, primarily focusing on shop floor scheduling and shop floor control software. He transferred to HP's Design Automation group in 1981 to work on VLSI CAD systems. Primary responsibilities were for VLSI module generator software for a large-scale ASIC design system (ChipBuster). Allan moved to HP Labs Software Technology Lab in 1987 where, over the next 12 years, he worked artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, multimedia systems, and information retrieval and visualization. Projects included a multimedia medical monitoring and collaboration system with University of Pittsburgh Children's Hospital and a digital multimedia organization and retrieval system (FotoFile). Allan transferred to the newly formed Agilent Technologies company in 1999 to work on bioinformatics software.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Allan now lives in San Francisco with his wife, Janice Lagerlof. They have two college-age children, David and Anna. When he’s not busy paying tuition bills, Allan enjoys guitar playing, movies, and politics.