B.S., Biology, 1978.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ph.D., Molecular Biology, 1984.
University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado. ``The Information Content of Binding Sites on Nucleotide Sequences''.

Awards

• 1974: Westinghouse Science Talent Search (top 40)
  for the "worm", a form of (what is now called) artificial life.
• 1975: Ellen King Prize for Freshman Writing at MIT (3rd Place)
• 1976: Robert A. Boit Writing Prize at MIT (2nd Place)
• 1980-1981: National Institutes of Health Training Grant, NIH 5 T32 GM07385-04, at the University of Colorado
• 1983: Graduate Student Research and Creative Work Award, University of Colorado.
• 1992: Frederick County Public School System's Highest honor, a Board Pin for being a mentor in the National Cancer Institute Student Intern Program for 4 years.

Professional Experience

• 1999 June - present: Tenured position as a Research Biologist, Laboratory of Experimental and Computational Biology, NIH, NCI, CCR.
• December 1987 - June 1999: Senior Staff Fellow or Investigator, Laboratory of Mathematical Biology, (Division of Basic Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, Maryland)
• January 1987-November 1987: Postdoctoral Research Associate with Gary Stormo, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado
  Conclusion of the T7 promoter experiment, described below.
• 1984-1986: Postdoctoral Research Associate with Larry Gold, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado
  I did a randomized synthetic DNA genetic engineering experiment to determine whether the excess information at bacteriophage T7 promoters is used by the polymerase (Schneider1989). The experiment was successful, and showed that the T7 polymerase does not use the excess sequence conservation. This supports the hypothesis that a second protein binds.
• 1978-1984: Ph.D. candidate, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado I designed and wrote a computer language called Delila for manipulating DNA sequences (Schneider1982,Schneider1984) which we used to investigate the statistics of ribosome binding sites (Gold1981,StormoInitiation1982). We used this system to train a perceptron to identify ribosome binding sites, and so we were the first group to apply neural networks to the problem of finding nucleic acid binding sites (StormoPerceptron1982). I designed and built plasmids for studying the quantitative relationships between sequence and function of ribosome binding sites (Childs1985,Stormo1986,Barrick.ribosomes1994). My thesis was on the information content of nucleic-acid binding sites (Schneider1986). It describes the excess information (excess sequence conservation) found at bacteriophage T7 promoters. This purely mathematical calculation led me to predict the existence of a second binding protein.
• 1980: Teaching Assistant, Molecular Genetics, University of Colorado I graded tests and helped students to understand the material.
• 1979: Teaching Assistant, Cell and Tissue Biology, University of Colorado I taught two lab sections and graded tests.
• 1974-1978: Undergraduate, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts I worked at the Architecture Machine in the Department of Architecture on a computer system to recognize visual scenes by parallel processing. I did this on a serial processor since no parallel processors were available at that time. This work was funded for the summer of 1977 by the MIT Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.
• 1975 and 1976: Computer Aide, Space Environment Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO (summer) I designed and wrote programs to display meteorological data gathered in real time on a NOAA airplane flying through storm systems such as hurricanes.

Professional Service

• Reviewer to evaluate the contract proposals for the establishment of a national nucleic-acid sequence data bank, Bethesda, Maryland, March 30, 1982.
• Advisor to NIGMS on GenBank, the national Genetic Sequence Data Bank. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 16, 1982; Los Alamos, New Mexico, January 13, 1984; Bethesda, Maryland, October 31, 1985; Bethesda, Maryland, November 5-6, 1987; Los Alamos, New Mexico, April 11-12, 1988; Bethesda, Maryland, November 14-15, 1988). I became interested in creating a formal definition of the national sequence databank (see PhilGen.)
• Site Visit and Special Study Section to review an application by Dr. Charles Lawrence, Baylor University College of Medicine, Houston, TX. August 7-8, 1988.
• Advisor to the Protein Identification Resource (August 1992)
• Consultant to the Office of Naval Research, Biological Science and Technology Program on initiating projects on molecular computation, December 20, 1994.

Meetings and Talks

• Third workshop on the national nucleic-acid-sequence data bank, National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), Bethesda, Maryland, December 7, 1980.
• Second European Molecular Biology Conference on Computer Analysis of Nucleotide Sequence Information, Schonau, West Germany, May, 1981. ``The Delila System''.
• Maximum Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Applied Statistics, 6th Annual Workshop, Seattle, Washington, August 5-8, 1986. ``Information Content of Binding Sites on Nucleotide Sequences''.
• Macromolecules, Genes, and Computers, Waterville Valley, N. H., August 12-17, 1986. ``Directions for Genetic Sequence Data Bases''.
• Supercomputing Research Center, Bowie, MD. May 24, 1991, ``Theory of Molecular Machines''.
• Partnerships in Education Workshop, The Regional Education Service Agency of Appalachian Maryland, Hagerstown, MD. January 31, 1992. ``NCI-FCRDC Student Intern Program: Planning for our Scientific Future.''
• CREST Statewide Conference on Science and Engineering Partnerships. University of Maryland, College Park. April 7, 1992. ``National Cancer Institute Student Intern Program: Planning for our Scientific Future.''
• Physics of Computation Workshop, Dallas, Texas, October 2-4, 1992, ``Use of Information Theory in Molecular Biology''.
• Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark, April 20, 1993: ``Information Theory of Molecular Binding Sites: Bits and Sequence Logos'' and Department of Physical Chemistry at the Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark, April 22, 1993: ``Theory of Molecular Machines: Gumballs and Hyperspace''. (5 hours of lectures.)
• Frederick Community College, May 10, 1993, ``Use of Information Theory in Molecular Biology''.
• The Washington Evolutionary Systems Society (WESS) Washington, D.C., November 4, 1993, ``Information Theory and Molecular Recognition''.
• Washington-Baltimore Section of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in conjunction with the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America, Washington, D.C., April 26, 1994, ``New Approaches in Mathematical Biology: Information Theory and Molecular Machines''.
• Biomolecular Databases: Current Status, June 13-14, 1994, Biophysical Society, Bethesda, MD. ``Philosophy and Definition for a Universal Genetic Sequence Database''.
• 1994 Third International E. coli Genome meeting, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, November 4-8, 1994, ``New approaches in mathematical biology: information theory and molecular machines''.
• New England Biolabs, Beverly, Mass. February 9, 1995 ``New Approaches in Mathematical Biology: Information Theory and Molecular Machines''.
• Ptashne Laboratory, Harvard, Mass. February 10, 1995 ``New Approaches in Mathematical Biology: Information Theory and Molecular Machines''.
• Keynote speaker for the Informatics session of the Trieste Conference on Chemical Evolution, IV: Physics of the Origin and Evolution of Life, Cyril Ponnamperuma Memorial, Trieste, Italy, September 4-8, 1995. September 4-8, 1995 ``New Approaches in Mathematical Biology: Information Theory and Molecular Machines''.

  ---

  See Presentations For presentations from 1996 onwards.

Poster Sessions

• NIH Research Festival '90, Bethesda, MD, September 10, 1990, T. D. Schneider ``Sequence Logos: A New Way to Display Consensus Sequences''.
• NIH Research Festival '91, P. P. Papp, D. K. Chattoraj and T. D. Schneider Bethesda, MD, September 23, 1991, ``Information analysis of a set of DNA sites that bind protein''.
• Second Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology, T. D. Schneider Palo Alto, CA, November 7-9, 1991, ``Theory of Molecular Machines''.
• NIH Research Festival '92, T. D. Schneider Bethesda, MD, September 21, 1992, ``Theory of Molecular Machines''.
• ACM Workshop on Information Retrieval and Genomics Bethesda, MD, USA, May 2-4, 1994, ``A Philosophy and Definition for Genetic Sequence Databases''.
• NCI Division of Basic Sciences' Retreat, December 4-5, 1995, Marriott's Hunt Valley Inn, and Transcription Factor Interest Group, December 13, 1995, NIH Bethesda, ``Consensus Sequences: Just Say No!''.
• NCI Combined Intramural Principal Investigator Retreat, Novmeber 25-26, 1996, Westfields International Conference Center, Chantilly, VA ``Information Analysis of Human Splice Site Mutations''.

Reviewed papers for:

• CABIOS (January 1994, March 1994, March 1995).
• Gene (February 1992),
• Genomics (April 1996),
• Journal of Bacteriology (May 1993, October 1993),
• Journal of biotechnology (September 1988),
• Journal of Molecular Biology (February 1990),
• Journal of Theoretical Biology (December 1991, May 1994, April 1995, June 1996),
• Machine Learning (December 1993),
• Molecular Carcinogenesis (May 1993),
• Nanotechnology (November 1991, April 1995),
• Nucleic Acids Research (December 1988, November 1989, June 1990, November 1990, September 1992, October 1992, January 1993, April 1993, July 1993, December 1994, August 1995, May 1996),
• Physical Review Letters (August 1990),
• Protein Sequences & Data Analysis (May 1988, January 1993).

Reviewed Grants for:

• National Science Foundation (March 1989, September 1989, October 1990, October 1992 [two]),
• National Institute of General Medical Sciences, NIH (September 1994),
• NASA Life Sciences Review (July 1995).

Patents

• Number 4,276,570 (1981) Method and Apparatus for Producing an Image of a Person's Face at a Different Age. (Images thanks to IBM's patent server) I developed the method at the Architecture Machine at MIT (now The Media Lab) in collaboration with Nancy Burson an artist in New York city. This method is now being used by The National center for Missing and Exploited Children to age the images of missing children to aid in their recovery. See the October 1995 (volume 26, number 7, p. 70-80) issue of the Smithsonian Magazine. A working demonstration is in the Franklin Museum in Philadelphia, PA.
• United States Patent 5,867,402 (1999), Computational analysis of nucleic acid information defines binding sites
• United States Patent 6,774,222 (2004), Molecular Computing Elements: Gates and Flip-Flops

Computer Experience

Sports

Links to Other Relevant Pages

• Former Lab Members
• Bibliography
• Current Bibliography in Medline Molecular Biology Subset. This does not include all papers, but does give some abstracts.
• Home page

The sketch was drawn by Nino Falanga

Schneider Lab
origin before: 1995 June 23
updated: 2006 Feb 1 (but very out of date!)