Matt DeJongh joined the Hope College Department of Computer Science in 2002. He teaches courses in software design, programming languages and computational theory, and has served as the department chair. He has also served as director of the Senior Seminar program, overseeing the capstone courses in which senior students write their lifeview papers before leaving Hope College. Matt came to Hope after working as a software engineer for a bioinformatics company. He has carried that expertise with him as he conducts interdisciplinary collaborative research with students and colleagues in both the computer science and biology departments. 

AREAS OF INTEREST

Matt has interests in both computer science and theology. His research centers around discovering more about energy-producing and disease-causing bacteria by developing software to determine the organism's metabolic capabilities based on its genome. He is also interested in the ways that digital technology is changing conceptions about human nature.

Matt is also an amateur pianist and uses his computer to accompany him in piano concertos (see “A Duet of Music and Computer Programming Brings a Concerto, and a Dream, to Life”).

EDUCATION

• M.A., theological studies, Winebrenner Theological Seminary, 1998
• Ph.D., computer science (artificial intelligence), The Ohio State University, 1991
• M.S., computer science, The Ohio State University, 1986
• B.S., computer science and mathematics, The Ohio State University, 1985

HONORS, GRANTS & AWARDS

• Visiting Professor, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, Japan, September–December 2023.
• Visiting Professor, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, UK, September 2022–June 2023.
• National Science Foundation, Collaborative Research: RUI: Modeling Transcriptome Inferred Gene Activity States for the Investigation of Metabolic and Regulatory Diversity of Sequenced Microbes, starting August 2017
• Fulbright Research Scholar at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine, University of Luxembourg, February–June 2016
• Department of Energy, KBase: An Integrated Knowledgebase for Predictive Biology and Environmental Research, Subcontract to Argonne National Laboratory, September 2011–August 2016
• Fulbright Research Scholar at the Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique, Bordeaux, France, Fulbright-Aquitaine Regional Council Award, January–June 2009

PUBLISHED WORK

• “KBase: The United States Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase,” with Arkin A, Cottingham R, Henry C, et al.,  Nature Biotechnology, Vol. 36, July, 2018
• “Identification and Analysis of Bacterial Genomic Metabolic Signatures,” with *Bowerman N, Tintle N, DeJongh M, Best AA, Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing, Vol. 22, January, 2017
• “High-throughput generation, optimization and analysis of genome-scale metabolic models,” Henry, C, DeJongh, M, Best, A, *Frybarger, P, Linsay, B, Stevens, R, Nature Biotechnology, Vol. 28, No. 9, August 2010

* denotes student co-author

View Matt's full Curriculum Vitae

why I Love Hope

Matt is appreciative of the college's holistic approach to education in the context of the historic Christian faith and of the campus-wide priority placed on each individual student. Developing meaningful relationships with his students is an important part of Matt's role. In addition, he finds Hope students are generally kind, fun-loving, engaged and thoughtful.