Prof. Christophe Dessimoz

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Associate Professor, University of Lausanne
Executive Director, Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics
Professor of Bioinformatics, University College London

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Short bio

Christophe studied biology at ETH Zurich and obtained his PhD in computer science (2009) from the same institution. After a postdoc at the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge (UK), he joined University College London as Lecturer (2013), then Reader (2015), then Professor (2020). In 2015, he moved his main activities to the University of Lausanne, first as SNSF Professor (2015), then as Associate Professor (2021). Since 2016, Christophe is also a group leader at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. In 2022, he became joint executive director of SIB.

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Longer bio

Christophe did his first degree in Biology at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (1999-2003). After half-year stints at Northwestern University (Evanston, USA), Tsinghua University (Beijing, China), and at Chulalongkorn University (Bangkok, Thailand), he returned to ETH Zurich at the Department of Computer Science for his PhD (2004-2009), under the supervision of Gaston Gonnet.

After being promoted to teaching faculty member (2010) and senior research associate (2011) at ETH Zurich, he moved to the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, as a visiting scientist in Nick Goldman’s group funded by a fellowship of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

He moved to University College London in 2013 as a Lecturer on a joint appointment between the Department of Genetics, Evolution & Environment and the Department of Computer Science. He was promoted to Reader in 2015, and to Professor in 2020.

In 2015, he joined UNIL as SNSF Professor. In 2021, he became Associate Professor. He retains an appointment at UCL, where he remains active in research and teaching.

Since 2016, Christophe is also a group leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.In 2018, he was elected as group leader representative on the SIB Board of Directors. In 2022, he was appointed as joint executive director of the institute.

An interview is available here (English). A biography is provided in this article (English) and in this university profile (French). There is another interview here (French) here.

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Distinctions

• Optimus Agora Award, 2021
• ISCB Overton Prize, 2019
• EMBO Young Investigator, 2016
• SIB Young Bioinformatician Award, 2012

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Academic leadership and service

Current

• Editor for PeerJ and BMC Evolutionary Biology
• Frequent peer reviewer for numerous journals and grant agencies
• Head of the UNIL Doctoral Program in Quantitative Biology
• Board of Directors member of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (2018-2023)
• Board of Directors member of the International Society for Computational Biology (2021-2023)
• Scientific Advisory Board member of the Gene Ontology (GO) Consortium
• Steering committee member of the Quest for Orthologs consortium
• Steering committee member of the ISCB Evolution and Comparative Genomics COSI

 

Previous

• President of the Life Science Switzerland (LS2) Bioinformatics "Intersection"
• Conference organisation and programme committees (selected):
  • ISMB/ECCB 2019, Area co-chair (Population Genomics and Molecular Evolution), EvolCompGen COSI co-chair
  • ISMB 2018, COSI Proceedings Chair (Evolution)
  • ISMB/ECCB 2015, Area co-chair (Applied Bioinformatics)
  • PC member of ECCB 2012, ISMB AFP 2013, BC[2] 2015, AlCoB 2015, ISMB/ECCB 2015, ECCB 2016, ISMB AFP 2017, GenoPri’18
  • Co-organizer of Quest for Orthologs 2 (Hinxton, 2011), 4 (Barcelona, 2015), 5 (Los Angeles, 2017), and 6 (Nagoya, 2019)
  • Co-organizer of GNOME 2014
• Co-chair of the EMBL-EBI postdoc association (2012-2013)
• Co-founder of Young European Biotech Network (2001)

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Consulting

• Expert witness for patent litigation, with experience in UK, US, and French cases.

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Media coverage

Selected interviews and quotes are listed here.