International Society for Computational Biology

ISCB Congratulates and Introduces the 2020 Class of Fellows!

The ISCB Fellows program was created to honor members who have distinguished themselves through outstanding contributions to the fields of computational biology and bioinformatics. Begun in 2009, 2020 marks the 11th anniversary of the program. In early December of each year, ISCB has sought Fellow’s nominations from our members, with eligibility restrictions based on selection criteria focused most heavily on the significance of scientific contributions.

We were pleased to receive many outstanding nominations this year, and the Fellows Selection Committee members carefully considered each one. Ultimately, twelve nominees were elected as this year's newest Fellows.

Serafim Batzoglou - 2020 ISCB FellowSerafim Batzoglou, DNAnexus, Insitro, for foundational and innovative contributions to computational genomics in both academia and industry, through his visionary research, mentoring of young leaders and his own leadership and service to the community.



Judith Blake - 2020 ISCB FellowJudith Blake, The Jackson Laboratory, for her many contributions to bioinformatics over her distinguished career, most notably the Gene Ontology and the Mouse Genome Databases. These two resources are fundamental pieces of scientific infrastructure serving as foundational tools on which so much of genome-scale science is built.
Mark Borodovsky - 2020 ISCB FellowMark Borodovsky, Georgia Institute of Technology, for his influential research in developing algorithms of genome analysis as well as recognized leadership in education and community development.
Rita Casadio - 2020 ISCB FellowRita Casadio, University of Bologna, as one of the pioneers of machine learning based approaches for predicting protein structures, protein function and the impact of genetic variation. The methods from her group have been highly ranked in international competitions assessing prediction of protein structure (CASP), function (CAFA) and variant impact (CAGI).
Paul Flicek - 2020 ISCB FellowPaul Flicek, EMBL-EBI, as a leading figure in the field of genomics and for his tireless efforts advocating for open data and equal opportunities for women in science, including the Earth BioGenome Project in which he advocates workable data sharing practices.
Osamu Gotoh - 2020 ISCB FellowOsamu Gotoh, Kyoto University, a pioneer in computational biology and an exemplary professional researcher, specifically for his contribution to sequence alignment through the development of what is now known as the Smith-Waterman-Gotoh algorithm. 
Rafael Irizarryo - 2020 ISCB FellowRafael Irizarry, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute / Harvard T.S. Chan School of Public Health, for his pioneering work in expression analysis and development of statistical methods for expression analysis which are some of the most impactful in the entire field. He is one of the leaders of the open-source Bioconductor project since its beginning.
Laxmi Parida - 2020 ISCB FellowLaxmi Parida, IBM, for her breakthrough contributions to algorithms across diverse applications with impact to human health and society through IBM and clients. She was instrumental in the design of the core engine and accuracy of Watson for Genomics offering in precision oncology.
Katherine Pollard - 2020 ISCB FellowKatherine Pollard, Gladstone Institutes, University of California, a world leader in developing statistical models and open-source bioinformatics software for biological big data, with an emphasis on genomics. She has uncovered biomedical knowledge that would be missed without her rigorous computational approaches.
Ben Raphael - 2020 ISCB FellowBen Raphael, Princeton University, as a widely acknowledged leader in the area of computational and mathematical aspects of cancer genomics, with special emphasis on inferring tumor phylogenies.
Zhiping Weng - 2020 ISCB FellowZhiping Weng, University of Massachusetts Medical School, for her seminal contributions to computational biology and bioinformatics, specifically in structural biology (widely-used ZDOCK suite of protein-protein docking algorithms), regulatory genomics (pipelines for analyzing genomic and epigenomic data from ENCODE and PsychENCODE Consortia) and small-RNA biology (piRNAs).
Xuegong Zhang - 2020 ISCB FellowXuegong Zhang, Tsinghua University, for the development of computational methods for analyzing transcriptomic and RNA-seq data including the methods DEGseq, DEsingle, SCRL, scFly, and establishing an influential graduate program, educating a generation of students, and promoting the field of computational biology and bioinformatics in China.
ISCB will be honoring the 2020 Class of Fellows during ISMB 2020 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, July 12-16.

Congratulations, 2020 Class of ISCB Fellows!