The International Society For Computational Biology (ISCB) has awarded its Accomplishment By A Senior Scientist Award to Gunnar von Heijne, director of the Stockholm Center for Biomembrane Research in Sweden and professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at Stockholm University.

 

The Senior Scientist Award recognises members of the community who have made major contributions to the field of computational biology. As a winner, von Heijne will give a keynote address the Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology in July in Long Beach, California (ISMB; www.iscb.org/ismb2012).

 

von Heijne gained a PhD in theoretical physics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, in 1980. By his own admission, he stumbled into the field of signal peptides while looking for interesting problems to work on. He soon revolutionised the field with the discovery of identifying patterns in signal peptides. He then developed an algorithm that could predict whether proteins have a signal peptide. Since then, he has focused on membranes and how proteins move across them. In the process, he has made the transition from theoretician to experimentalist. "I realised that wetlab science is great fun,” he says.

 

President of the ISCB, Burkhard Rost, says von Heijne is a worthy winner. "He is one of the few who completely changed the field using computational methods and also had an experimental lab running,” says Rost. "I am very happy that he gets this award.”

 

Alfonso Valencia, chair of the ISCB awards committee, agrees. "The computational tools he has developed are among the most quoted in bioinformatics,” says Valencia. "He is a leading figure in the field and this is our way of recognising his contribution.”

 

von Heijne says the award has taken him somewhat by surprise. "It was completely unexpected so I am very happy to receive it,” he says.

 

For information about this award and its past winners, please visit www.iscb.org/iscb-awards/accomplishment-senior-scientist-award

 

The International Society For Computational Biology (ISCB) has awarded the Overton Prize for outstanding accomplishment to Ziv Bar-Joseph, associate professor at the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

 

The Overton Prize is awarded annually to an early to mid-career scientist who has made a significant contribution to the field of computational biology. In recognition of the award, Bar-Joseph will give a keynote address at the Annual International Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology in July, to be held this year in Long Beach, California (ISMB; www.iscb.org/ismb2012).

 

Bar-Joseph gained a PhD in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003 where he also discovered the challenge of analysing high-throughput biological data using computational techniques. Since then, he has developed important techniques using machine learning for integrating multiple biological data sources in ways that infer dynamic regulatory networks.  He has also pioneered the search for biological solutions to complex computational problems, such as how to build robust distributed networks efficiently.

 

"We have all been impressed by the quality of his scientific contribution and the novelty of the approaches he has developed,” says Alfonso Valencia, chair of the ISCB awards committee.

 

Burkhard Rost, president of the ISCB, has been hugely impressed by Bar-Joseph's work. "It's stunning how he is able to handle such a diverse set of technical methods,” he says. "He's a perfect example of a new generation of scientists.”

 

Bar Joseph says he is honoured to be receiving the award: "I know many of the past winners and it's an amazing group.”

 

For more information about the Overton Prize and its past recipients, please visit www.iscb.org/iscb-awards/overton-prize.