Amos Bairoch awarded European Latsis Prize 2004

The European Science Foundation will award this years European Latsis Prize to Professor Amos Bairoch from the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Geneva, Switzerland, for his fundamental pioneering contribution to the development of bioinformatics. The prize ceremony will take place at the Hotel Hilton in Strasbourg, France, Thursday the 18 November.

The European Latsis Prize, valued at 100.000 Swiss Francs (68,000 €) is awarded to an individual or group who, in the opinion of their peers, has made the greatest contribution to a particular field of European research. The chosen field of the 2004 prize was “Bioinformatics”.

Professor Amos Bairoch is recognised for his pioneering role in developing the field of bioinformatics and for his early vision that there was a need for a computerised approach to handle and store the increasing amount of genetic and proteomic data which was produced in the laboratories.

From the very beginning Amos Bairoch tried to establish a common language and terminology around biological databases. He was among the first researchers who saw the opportunities for exploiting the computers’ ability to compare huge amount of data and search for meta information and patterns in DNA and protein sequences. He designed the first protein database linking protein sequences to families or domains of proteins, PROSITE, and he developed ENZYME, a database of information on the nomenclature of enzymes.

Furthermore, Professor Amos Bairoch initiated the principle of interlinking biological databases, and promoted a network of interconnected resources including structural information, protein sequence motifs, enzymatic function and other types of experimental data. In this context, he was one of the very first to understand the value of the world wide web for disseminating biological data and analysis tools, and the ExPASy web site he helped establish has been a key site for protein sequence related information and associated analyses since as early as 1993 – so far, the Swiss ExPASy site and its mirror sites have received more than four hundred million hits from scientific users worldwide.

The Swiss-Prot database, which he founded and developed over the last two decades together with his colleagues, is the primary protein sequence resource in the world and has been a key research instrument for both bioinformaticians and laboratory based scientists in a very wide range of applications. Today, more than 150 people work on Swiss-Prot in Geneva and Cambridge.

Contact

Mr. Jens Degett typo3/esf_contacts_form.php?unit=2&contact=88

Category: Media Centre, Press Releases 2004