ISCB Congratulates Philip Bourne on Recent NIH Appointment

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) congratulates past president and Fellow, Philip E. Bourne, Ph.D., on being selected as the first permanent Associate Director for Data Science (ADDS) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Bourne will start his new role at NIH in early 2014.

Dr. Bourne received his training as a physical chemist and his Ph.D. in chemistry from The Flinders University in South Australia, taking him to his current position at the University of California, San Diego, where he is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Industry Alliances and a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. In addition, he currently holds the positions of Associate Director of the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) Protein Data Bank and Adjunct Professor at the Sanford Burnham Institute.

“The creation of the ADDS position represents the commitment of NIH Director Francis S. Collins to a trans-NIH investment in advancing computational efforts and support in this age of biomedical research as an information science,” said Jill P. Mesirov, Associate Director and Chief Informatics Officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and member of the ISCB Board of Directors, who served on the NIH Advisory Committee to the Director's Data and Informatics Working Group. “Phil Bourne has long been involved in community efforts around this same goal. We all look forward to working with him and lending him our support as he takes on this critical role.”

Dr. Bourne brings to NIH a professional focus on relevant biological and educational outcomes derived from computation and scholarly communication entailing algorithms, text mining, machine learning, metalanguages, biological databases, and visualization applied to problems in systems pharmacology, evolution, cell signaling, apoptosis, immunology and scientific dissemination.   

As a founding board member of ISCB and president from 2002 – 2004, Dr. Bourne’s vision and leadership has helped establish the Society which has greatly contributed to advancing the worldwide awareness and understanding of the science of computational biology. Dr. Bourne was named to the prestigious group of ISCB Fellows in 2011. Dr. Bourne is the co-founder and founding Editor-in-Chief of the open access journal PLOS Computational Biology. He has published over 300 papers and 5 books, selling over 150,000 copies. Dr. Bourne’s professional focus has lended itself to a commitment to furthering the free dissemination of science through new models of publishing and better integration and subsequent dissemination of data and results which as far as possible should be freely available to all.

"ISCB is honored to have Phil's participation over the years," said Burkhard Rost, ISCB President. "We look forward to his future contributions to our fields as the Associate Director for Data Science at NIH."

About ISCB:
The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) - www.iscb.org - has been the first and continues to be the only society representing computational biology and bioinformatics on a worldwide scale. ISCB serves a global community of over 3,000 scientists dedicated to advancing the scientific understanding of living systems through computation. We convene the world’s experts and future leaders in top conferences, we host the Intelligent Systems in Molecular Biology (ISMB) Conference, and we partner with publications that promote discovery and expand access to computational biology and bioinformatics. We deliver valuable information about training, education, employment, and relevant news. ISCB also provides an influential voice on government and scientific policies that are important to our members and benefit the public.