IRVINE — Pierre Baldi, Chancellor's Professor of computer science and director of the Institute for Genomics & Bioinformatics at UC Irvine, has been awarded the 2010 Eduardo R. Caianiello Prize by the Italian Neural Networks Society for significant contributions to the field of neural networks.The distinguished prize is named for the late Italian physicist Eduardo R. Caianiello, a pioneer in neural networks — circuits of biological or artificial neurons — and founder of the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies. Past recipients include Nobel Prize winners Torsten Wiesel and Gerald Edelman.

Baldi researches intelligence in natural and artificial neural systems. Current projects in his group focus on developing machine learning and other statistical approaches for artificial intelligence and large-scale data mining; creating chemistry expert systems; predicting protein properties; comparing genomes and understanding gene regulation; and computationally screening and designing new drugs and chemical interactions.

About the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences: The first independent computer science school within the UC system, the Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences was elevated from department to school status in December 2002. Today it has more than 1,500 students, about 100 full-time faculty and staff, and approximately 6,500 alumni worldwide. With experts in areas from embedded computer systems and networking to bioinformatics and the social impact of computing, the school ranks 15th among all public university computer science graduate programs, according to U.S. News & World Report.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UC Irvine is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with nearly 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,000 staff. Orange County's largest employer, UC Irvine contributes an annual economic impact of $3.9 billion. For more news, visit www.today.uci.edu.