Webb Miller and Trey Ideker To Receive Top International Bioinformatics Awards for 2009 from the International Society for Computational Biology

B. J. Morrison McKay,Clare Sansom

doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000375

Abstract

Each year, the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB; http://www.iscb.org) makes two major awards to recognize excellence in the field of bioinformatics. The ISCB Awards Committee, composed of current and past directors of the Society and previous award winners, has announced that the 2009 ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award will be given to Webb Miller (Image 1) of The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, United States of America (USA), and the 2009 ISCB Overton Prize for outstanding achievement in early- to mid-career will be awarded to Trey Ideker (Image 2) of the University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, USA, who serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for PLoS Computational Biology. These awards represent the highest tribute and recognition of scientific excellence within the bioinformatics community, and they are seen as honors well beyond the boundaries of the discipline. Both 2009 award winners started their careers in basic computer science, but since moving into bioinformatics they have made important contributions to biological understanding as well as to algorithm design. Image 1 Webb Miller. Trey Ideker. Both awards will be presented at the Society's flagship international conference, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), where the winners will give keynote presentations. In 2009, the (seventeenth) annual ISMB will be held in conjunction with the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) for the third time; ISMB/ECCB 2009 will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 27 through July 2.

Highlights

Both awards will be presented at the Society’s flagship international conference, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), where the winners will give keynote presentations
In 2009, the annual ISMB will be held in conjunction with the European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) for the third time; ISMB/ ECCB 2009 will take place in Stockholm, Sweden, from June 27 through July 2
Miller will be joining a prestigious group of previous winners: David Sankoff (University of Ottawa, Canada), David Lipman (US National Center for Biotechnology Information, United States of America (USA)), Janet Thornton (European Bioinformatics Institute, United Kingdom (UK)), Mike Waterman (University of Southern California, USA), Temple Smith (Boston University, USA), and David Haussler (University of California Santa Cruz, USA)

Summary

Introduction

Both awards will be presented at the Society’s flagship international conference, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), where the winners will give keynote presentations. Established in 2003, ISCB’s Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award recognizes members of the computational biology community who have made major contributions to the field through research, education, service, or a combination of the three. His work at this time was still focused on theoretical computer science; even when he started at Penn State he had no experience of practical computing or writing code.

Results

Conclusion