Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Tennessee, Scott Emrich was the Director of Bioinformatics at the University of Notre Dame with a primary faculty appointment in Computer Science and Engineering and a courtesy appointment in Biological Sciences. He obtained his B.S. in Biology and Computer Science from Loyola College (MD) and his Ph.D. in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology from Iowa State University, where he was the recipient of the 2008 Zaffrano Prize for Graduate Research.
His research focuses on computational genomics/sequence analysis and related informatics with an emphasis on global health and ecological applications. He has published over 75 peer-reviewed publications including venues such as Science (2 covers), PNAS, Nature and Genome Research. He has four active awards from the NIH including leading roles on a NIAID contract (VectorBase) and a 2017 funded P01 (malaria genetics).