[Next-Generation Sequencing Book]
  • [Photo] J.W. Bizzaro • March 3, 2007
    Bioinformatics.Org is proud to present the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award in the Life Sciences to Sean Eddy of the HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus [1]. As expressed by his nominators, Sean has been a tireless champion for openness in science. He is the open-source author of HMMER [2], and its free distribution to academic and commercial users has revolutionized the use of profile Hidden Markov Models in protein sequence analysis. His co-creation of the Pfam database of protein domains and families [3] has been an essential counterpart as the basis of genome annotations, family classification systems such as GO, and much of our common language of protein annotation. His work on small RNAs has helped launch that field, and a variety of other open-access software tools and analyses have had profound effects on the field of bioinformatics.

    The Benjamin Franklin Award in the Life Sciences is a humanitarian and bioethics award presented annually by Bioinformatics.Org to an individual who has, in his or her practice, promoted free and open access to the materials and methods used in the life sciences. The Award is named for Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), one of the most remarkable men of his time. Scientist, inventor, statesman, Franklin freely and openly shared his ideas and refused to patent his inventions. And it is the opinion of the founders of Bioinformatics.Org that he embodied the best traits of a scientist.

    At the beginning of the year, requests for nominations for the 2007 Award were sent out to more than 20,000 members of Bioinformatics.Org. Any individual who received more than one nomination was considered a nominee and had their name placed on the ballot for final selection by the membership.

    The ceremony for the presentation of the Award will be at the 2007 Bioinformatics.Org Annual Meeting (BiOAM), co-hosted by Cambridge Healthtech Institute and held at the Bio-IT World Conference & Expo in Boston, Massachusetts, from April 30 to May 2, 2007. The presentation, which is open to all attendees, will be May 2 at 8:55 AM. It involves a short introduction, the presentation of the certificate, the laureate seminar, and an informal reception. Please see http://bio-itworldexpo.com for more information on the event.

    Past laureates of the Benjamin Franklin Award in the Life Sciences include Michael Ashburner (2006), Ewan Birney (2005), Lincoln Stein (2004), James Kent (2003) and Michael Eisen (2002). More information on the Award can be found at http://bioinformatics.org/franklin/.

    References:
    1. http://www.hhmi.org/research/groupleaders/eddy_bio.html
    2. http://hmmer.wustl.edu
    3. http://pfam.wustl.edu

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