Welcome!

I am the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Associate Professor of Bioinformatics in the Biology Department at Reed College. My research explores different ways to computationally model biological systems, concentrating on how diseases such as cancer affect these systems.

Before joining Reed in 2015, I was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech, working with T. M. Murali. I developed graph and hypergraph algorithms for signaling pathway prediction.

I received my PhD in 2012 from the Department of Computer Science at Brown University, advised by Ben Raphael (who is now at Princeton). My dissertation focused on analyzing structural variants in human and cancer genomes. I received my Master's from Brown in 2008 for work on motif identification from phosphoproteomic data.

I received my undergraduate degree from Carleton College in 2006. Advised by Dave Musicant, I worked with chemists to develop useful and scalable tools to analyze atmospheric particles.

Latest News

Spring 2026
Interested in meeting other computational biology faculty at undergraduate instituitons? Apply to participate in the Computational Biology Peer Mentor Network!
Fall 2025
I gave a talk in Pomona's Computer Science colloquium.
Altaf Barelvi and Oliver Anderson wrapped up their multi-year post-bac positions with me. This fall their major work was published: ProteinWeaver, a website that connects proteins to biological processes within a network, and GRPhIN, a method to enumerate small network patterns in graphs with directed and undirected edges. Good luck on your next steps!
I start my second (and final) year as Biology Department Chair.
I am honored to receive the named position of the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Associate Professor of Bioinformatics, named after one of the absolute pioneers in bioinformatics.
My Mid-Career Advancement (MCA) proposal was funded by the NSF in June! Holy cow.
More News


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Contact

Biology Department
Reed College
3203 SE Woodstock Blvd.
Portland, OR 97202-8199

Email icon aritz-at-reed-dot-edu

CV icon Curriculum Vitae [pdf]

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