Dr. Christophe Dessimoz

SNSF Professor, University of Lausanne
Associate Professor, University College London
Group leader, Swiss Institute for Bioinformatics

Short bio

Christophe obtained his Master in Biology (2003) and PhD in Computer Science (2009) from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. After a postdoc at the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge (UK), he joined University College London as lecturer (2013), then Reader (2015). In 2015, he joined the University of Lausanne as SNSF professor, retaining an appointment at UCL, where part of his lab remains active. Since 2016, Christophe is also a group leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

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, and was promoted to Reader in 2015.

In autumn 2015, he joined UNIL as SNSF professor. He retains an appointment at UCL, where part of his lab remains active.

Since 2016, Christophe is also a group leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

An interview in English is available here. A profile page in French is available here. There is also an interview in French here.

Academic leadership and service

Current

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

Previous

Conference organisation and programme committees (selected):
- 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)

Consulting

Expert witness in patent disputes, with experience in the UK and in the US

Media coverage

Selected interviews and quotes are listed here.