F1000Research 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 Last updated: 05 AUG 2021 EDITORIAL 2019 ISCB Overton Prize: Christophe Dessimoz [version 1; peer review: not peer reviewed] Diane Kovats 1, Ron Shamir1,2, Christiana Fogg3 1International Society for Computational Biology, Leesburg, USA 2Blavatnik School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel 3Freelance Writer, Kensington, USA v1 First published: 23 May 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 Not Peer Reviewed https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.19220.1 Latest published: 23 May 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.19220.1 This article is an Editorial and has not been subject to external peer review. Abstract Any comments on the article can be found at the Each year the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) end of the article. honors the achievements of an early- to mid-career scientist with the Overton Prize. This prize was instituted in 2001 to honor the untimely loss of Dr. G. Christian Overton, a respected computational biologist and founding member of the ISCB Board of Directors. The Overton Prize recognizes early or mid-career phase scientists who have made significant contributions to computational biology or bioinformatics through their research, teaching, and service. In 2019, ISCB recognized Dr. Christophe Dessimoz, Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Professor at the University of Lausanne, Associate Professor at the University College London, and Group Leader at the Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics. Dessimoz receives his award and is presenting a keynote address at the 2019 Joint Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology/European Conference on Computational Biology held in Basel, Switzerland on July 21-25, 2019. Keywords ISCB, Christophe Dessimoz, Award This article is included in the International Society for Computational Biology Community Journal gateway. Page 1 of 5 F1000Research 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 Last updated: 05 AUG 2021 Corresponding authors: Diane Kovats ([email protected]), Ron Shamir ([email protected]) Author roles: Kovats D: Writing – Review & Editing; Shamir R: Writing – Review & Editing; Fogg C: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Resources, Validation, Writing – Original Draft Preparation Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Grant information: The International Society for Computational Biology paid for the writing of this article. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Copyright: © 2019 Kovats D et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. How to cite this article: Kovats D, Shamir R and Fogg C. 2019 ISCB Overton Prize: Christophe Dessimoz [version 1; peer review: not peer reviewed] F1000Research 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.19220.1 First published: 23 May 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.19220.1 Page 2 of 5 F1000Research 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 Last updated: 05 AUG 2021 Christophe Dessimoz: Learning to Stop Resisting Christophe Dessimoz grew up in Switzerland and was deeply drawn to computers from a young age, right around the dawn of the web and widespread internet access. As a teenager, he spent a lot of time programming and developing websites. To avoid spending too much time in front of computers, he decided instead to pursue a first degree in Biology at ETH (Eidgenös- sische Technische Hochschule) Zurich, Switzerland. During and after his studies, he traveled and spent several months doing biology research at Northwestern University in the United States, Tsinghua University in China, and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. Dessimoz recalled his struggles at the bench and feared he was just too clumsy to pursue a career in biology. He was also still drawn to computers, and he said, “I just stopped resisting,” and returned to ETH Zurich to complete a PhD in Computer Science under the mentorship of Gaston Gonnet. Gonnet had expertise in symbolic and algebraic computation and helped develop a computer algebra system that became a founda- tion of the Maple system. Gonnet also cofounded the New Oxford Christophe Dessimoz English Dictionary Project, which created an electronic version of the Oxford English Dictionary that included a full text searching system. By the early nineties, this expertise in text searching and of Genetics, Evolution & Environment and the Department of string algorithms led him to bioinformatics. Computer Science. He was promoted to Reader in 2015, and he also joined the University of Lausanne (UNIL) as SNSF Dessimoz joined Gonnet’s team in 2004 to purse a PhD research Professor. Dessimoz became a group leader at the Swiss Insti- project in comparative genomics, right at the time when genomes tute of Bioinformatics in 2015, and he continues to maintain his were starting to become routinely available. There was an obvi- UCL and UNIL labs. Beyond his contributions to benchmarking, ous need to compare these genomes, and in particular to identify Dessimoz has made critical contributions to phylogenetics tests the corresponding genes in different species—the orthologs. of sequence alignment accuracy. Despite the decades of work in Dessimoz’s first scientific paper introduced the “Orthologous this area, he said, “We still struggle to assess the correctness of Matrix” (OMA) algorithm. The work provided the foundation alignments.” Dessimoz developed a novel assessment paradigm for the OMA database, which he kept working on ever since and based on the plausibility of trees reconstructed from inferred which has become a well-regarded resource. alignments, and through this work, he showed that the common practice of inferring trees from “high-confidence” alignment After completing his PhD and working as a teaching faculty columns only is counterproductive. Dessimoz has also made member and senior research associate at ETH Zurich, Dessimoz valuable contributions to methods used for Gene Ontology (GO) received a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Founda- annotation, particularly with the development of a technique tion (SNSF) to be a visiting scientist at the European Molecular using historical time series to track the fate of inferred annota- Biology Laboratory (EMBL)-European Bioinformatics Insti- tions over time. This approach has changed the way the GO tute (EBI) in Hinxton, UK. He joined Nick Goldman’s group consortium tracks annotation quality and has been adapted for to collaborate on large-scale phylogenetic methods. During other projects. Dessimoz continues to be drawn to research his stint at EBI, Dessimoz became increasingly interested in focused on evolutionary biology and orthology inference, and he benchmarking and developed an appreciation for this often also fascinated by the challenges of handling huge heterogeneous overlooked but critical methodological process. This interest is datasets. exemplified in his leadership role in the Quest for Orthologs Consortium, a community effort to improve orthology meth- Outside of the lab, Dessimoz has served the computational ods and their applications. Together with Adrian Altenhoff, biology community in many capacities, including service on his close associate since their days in Gonnet’s lab, Dessimoz multiple editorial and advisory boards and conference commit- developed a more direct approach to benchmarking orthology tees. Dessimoz’s groundbreaking research has been recognized inference methods based on congruence tests between genes by several other awards, including the 2017 Sentinel of Sci- and species trees, which has become a definitive method for ence Award, 2016 (European Molecular Biology Organization) orthology benchmarking. He has continued to advocate for the EMBO Young Investigator, 2015 Google Faculty Research importance of benchmarking and standardization for progress Award, and 2012 Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) Early in bioinformatics. Career Bioinformatician Award. Dessimoz feels deeply hon- ored by his selection as the 2019 Overton Prize winner, and he In 2013, Dessimoz moved to University College London as a acknowledges that the support and relative independence that Lecturer and held a joint appointment between the Department his mentors gave, as well as the productive partnerships with his Page 3 of 5 F1000Research 2019, 8(ISCB Comm J):722 Last updated: 05 AUG 2021 staff, trainees and collaborators have been instrumental to his success as an independent investigator. Grant information The International Society for Computational Biology paid for the writing of this article. Data availability Underlying data The funders had no role in study design, data collection and No data are associated with this article analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. 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