Ewan Birney
Encyclopedia
Ewan Birney is a senior scientist at the European Bioinformatics Institute
(EBI) and joint head of the Protein And Nucleic Acids (PANDA) group with Rolf Apweiler
. The PANDA group is responsible for the widely used Ensembl
genome browser, and highly-cited research on, for example, sequence analysis
tools. Birney is also a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge
.
He was educated at Eton College
, completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry
at
Balliol College, Oxford
and did his PhD
at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, under the supervision of Richard M. Durbin while registered at St John's College, Cambridge
.
Before studying at university he completed an internship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
under the supervision of James D. Watson
and Adrian Krainer. He has contributed to several bioinformatics
and computational biology
projects including the Pfam
database, InterPro
, BioPerl
and HMMER
toolkits. Most recently Birney is known for his role in the ENCODE
consortium.
(EMBL) European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), was awarded the 2005 Overton Prize
in honor of his advocacy of open source bioinformatics, and his generous contributions to the BioPerl community. Perhaps even more important to biology is his leadership of the Ensembl genome annotation project, providing rapid and accurate computational annotations for eukaryotic genomes."
was awarded to Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute. "As expressed by his nominators, Birney has been a significant force in Open Source in Bioinformatics and science. He has been a strong advocate for making genome information freely available to all. His work co-leading the Ensembl project has made high-quality genome annotation available freely over the web, preventing a class system of labs which can and cannot afford to pay subscription fees to proprietary data. The project has worked hard to make the data available in a variety of ways to make the data accessible and easily available for mining. The Ensembl project has been open-source from the outset, enabling researchers and corporations alike to reuse and extend the software system. Birney has been an advocate of open science as well. Along with Sean Eddy
, he criticized journal decisions to allow papers to be published without releasing the genome sequence data at the same time. He is also the author of the freely available Wise package of tools, which are important parts of genome annotation pipelines. He serves as a co-leader of the open-source bioinformatics toolkit Bioperl
and also co-founded and currently serves as president of the Open Bioinformatics foundation, an organization that support the development of several bioinformatics toolkits."
on 4 December 2003."
Technology Review
TR100
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
European Bioinformatics Institute
The European Bioinformatics Institute is a centre for research and services in bioinformatics, and is part of European Molecular Biology Laboratory...
(EBI) and joint head of the Protein And Nucleic Acids (PANDA) group with Rolf Apweiler
Rolf Apweiler
Rolf Apweiler is a senior scientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute and joint head of the Protein And Nucleic Acids group with Ewan Birney....
. The PANDA group is responsible for the widely used Ensembl
Ensembl
Ensembl is a joint scientific project between the European Bioinformatics Institute and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, which was launched in 1999 in response to the imminent completion of the Human Genome Project...
genome browser, and highly-cited research on, for example, sequence analysis
Sequence analysis
In bioinformatics, the term sequence analysis refers to the process of subjecting a DNA, RNA or peptide sequence to any of a wide range of analytical methods to understand its features, function, structure, or evolution. Methodologies used include sequence alignment, searches against biological...
tools. Birney is also a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College, Cambridge
Churchill College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England.In 1958, a Trust was established with Sir Winston Churchill as its Chairman of Trustees, to build and endow a college for 60 fellows and 540 Students as a national and Commonwealth memorial to Winston Churchill; its...
.
He was educated at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry
Biochemistry
Biochemistry, sometimes called biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes in living organisms, including, but not limited to, living matter. Biochemistry governs all living organisms and living processes...
at
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford
Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....
and did his PhD
PHD
PHD may refer to:*Ph.D., a doctorate of philosophy*Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*PHD finger, a protein sequence*PHD Mountain Software, an outdoor clothing and equipment company*PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, under the supervision of Richard M. Durbin while registered at St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College, Cambridge
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
.
Before studying at university he completed an internship at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory is a private, non-profit institution with research programs focusing on cancer, neurobiology, plant genetics, genomics and bioinformatics. The Laboratory has a broad educational mission, including the recently established Watson School of Biological Sciences. It...
under the supervision of James D. Watson
James D. Watson
James Dewey Watson is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA in 1953 with Francis Crick...
and Adrian Krainer. He has contributed to several bioinformatics
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics is the application of computer science and information technology to the field of biology and medicine. Bioinformatics deals with algorithms, databases and information systems, web technologies, artificial intelligence and soft computing, information and computation theory, software...
and computational biology
Computational biology
Computational biology involves the development and application of data-analytical and theoretical methods, mathematical modeling and computational simulation techniques to the study of biological, behavioral, and social systems...
projects including the Pfam
Pfam
Pfam is a database of protein families that includes their annotations and multiple sequence alignments generated using hidden Markov models.- Features :For each family in Pfam one can:* Look at multiple alignments* View protein domain architectures...
database, InterPro
InterPro
InterPro is a database of protein families, domains and functional sites in which identifiable features found in known proteins can be applied to new protein sequences in order to functionally characterise them....
, BioPerl
BioPerl
BioPerl is a collection of Perl modules that facilitate the development of Perl scripts for bioinformatics applications. It has played an integral role in the Human Genome Project....
and HMMER
HMMER
HMMER is a free and commonly used software package for sequence analysis written by Sean Eddy. Its general usage is to identify homologous protein or nucleotide sequences. It does this by comparing a profile-HMM to either a single sequence or a database of sequences...
toolkits. Most recently Birney is known for his role in the ENCODE
ENCODE
ENCODE is a public research consortium launched by the US National Human Genome Research Institute in September 2003. The goal is to find all functional elements in the human genome, one of the most critical projects by NHGRI after it completed the successful Human Genome Project...
consortium.
2005 Overton Prize
"Dr. Ewan Birney of the European Molecular Biology LaboratoryEuropean Molecular Biology Laboratory
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory is a molecular biology research institution supported by 20 European countries and Australia as associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and is an intergovernmental organisation funded by public research money from its member states...
(EMBL) European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), was awarded the 2005 Overton Prize
Overton Prize
The Overton Prize is an annual prize is awarded for outstanding accomplishment to a scientist in the early to mid stage of his or her career who has already made a significant contribution to the field of computational biology either through research, education, service, or a combination of the three...
in honor of his advocacy of open source bioinformatics, and his generous contributions to the BioPerl community. Perhaps even more important to biology is his leadership of the Ensembl genome annotation project, providing rapid and accurate computational annotations for eukaryotic genomes."
2005 Benjamin Franklin Award
The 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award in BioinformaticsBenjamin Franklin Award (Bioinformatics)
The Benjamin Franklin Award is an award for Open Access in the Life Sciences presented by the Bioinformatics Organization-Laureates:*2002 - Michael B. Eisen*2003 - Jim Kent*2004 - Lincoln D. Stein*2005 - Ewan Birney*2006 - Michael Ashburner...
was awarded to Ewan Birney of the European Bioinformatics Institute. "As expressed by his nominators, Birney has been a significant force in Open Source in Bioinformatics and science. He has been a strong advocate for making genome information freely available to all. His work co-leading the Ensembl project has made high-quality genome annotation available freely over the web, preventing a class system of labs which can and cannot afford to pay subscription fees to proprietary data. The project has worked hard to make the data available in a variety of ways to make the data accessible and easily available for mining. The Ensembl project has been open-source from the outset, enabling researchers and corporations alike to reuse and extend the software system. Birney has been an advocate of open science as well. Along with Sean Eddy
Sean Eddy
Sean R. Eddy is a scientist who leads a research group at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus in Virginia, with interests in bioinformatics, computational biology and biological sequence analysis...
, he criticized journal decisions to allow papers to be published without releasing the genome sequence data at the same time. He is also the author of the freely available Wise package of tools, which are important parts of genome annotation pipelines. He serves as a co-leader of the open-source bioinformatics toolkit Bioperl
BioPerl
BioPerl is a collection of Perl modules that facilitate the development of Perl scripts for bioinformatics applications. It has played an integral role in the Human Genome Project....
and also co-founded and currently serves as president of the Open Bioinformatics foundation, an organization that support the development of several bioinformatics toolkits."
2003 Francis Crick Lecture
"The inaugural Francis Crick Lecture was awarded to Dr Ewan Birney, for his leading role in establishing international standards for software used in genome informatics, and in making research data and software openly available to the research community. The lecture, entitled 'Being human: what our genome tells us' took place at the Royal SocietyRoyal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
on 4 December 2003."
Other
In 2002, he was named to the MITMassachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
Technology Review
Technology Review
Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...
TR100
TR35
The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...
as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.
External links
- Grants awarded to Ewan Birney by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research CouncilBiotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council is a UK Research Council and NDPB and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience...
- An Interview with Ewan Birney: Keynote Speaker at O'Reilly's Bioinformatics Technology Conference
- Ewan Birney's publications in DBLP
- Peer reviewed publications by Ewan Birney from PubMedPubMedPubMed is a free database accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health maintains the database as part of the Entrez information retrieval system...
- Ewan Birney research profile on BiomedExpertsBiomedExpertsBiomedExperts is a publication-based scientific social network that allows researchers to collaborate virtually, in order to increase biomedical research. It involves more than 3,500 institutions in more than 190 countries.-External links:*...
- Ewan Birney's Blog: Bioinformatician at large