The SIB Bioinformatics Awards celebrate outstanding achievements of early career bioinformaticians and groundbreaking resources. Since 2008, these awards have recognized exceptional researchers from around the globe in three categories: PhD Paper Award, Early Career Award and Innovative Resource Award. Explore the excellence of our past laureates who have shaped the field of bioinformatics and continue to inspire future generations of scientists

PhD Paper Award

(international since 2023, Swiss-wide before that date)

2021

Laureates: Stephanie Hyland, Martin Faltys, Matthias Hüser, Xinrui Lyu and Thomas Gumbsch, watch the presentation at the [BC]2 conference
Affiliations: ETH Zurich, Switzerland ; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA; Weill Cornell Medicine, USA ; Zurich University Hospital, Switzerland ; University of Bern ; SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
Paper: Early prediction of circulatory failure in the intensive care unit using Machine Learning

2019

Laureate: Jochen Singer, watch the presentation at the [BC]2 conference
Affiliation: ETH Zurich, Niko Beerenwinkel group, Switzerland
Paper: Single-cell mutation identification via phylogenetic inference

2017

Laureate: José Aguilar-Rodríguez, read the interview
Affiliation: University of Zurich, Andreas Wagner Laboratory
Paper: A thousand empirical adaptive landscapes and their navigability

2015

Laureate: Hannes Röst Steiner, read the interview
Affiliation: Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, Prof. Dr Rudolf Aebersold, ETH Zurich
Paper: OpenSWATH enables automated, targeted analysis of data- independent acquisition MS data

2014

Laureate: Josephine Daub, read the interview
Affiliation: Computational and Molecular Population Genetics, Laurent Excoffier, SIB & University of Bern
Paper: Evidence for Polygenic Adaptation to Pathogens in the Human Genome

2013

Laureates: Slavica Dimitrieva & Charles Vejnar (co-winners - 2 different publications)

  • Slavica Dimitrieva, read the interview
    Affiliation: Computational Cancer Genomics, Philipp Bucher, SIB & EPFL
    Paper: OpenSWATH enables automated, targeted analysis of data-independent acquisition MS data
  • Charles E. Vejnar, read the interview
    Affiliation: Computational Evolutionary Genomics, Evgeny Zdobnov, SIB University of Geneva
    Paper: MiRmap: comprehensive prediction of microRNA target repression strength

2012

Laureates: Christoph Zechner & Jakob Ruess (co-writers of the same publication), read the interview
Affiliation: Heinz Koeppl group, ETH Zurich (Christoph Zechner) and John Lygeros group, ETH Zurich (Jakob Ruess)
Paper: Moment-based inference predicts bimodality in transient gene expression

2011

Laureate: Guillaume Rey, read the interview
Affiliation: Computational Systems Biology Lab, Felix Naef group, SIB & EPFL
Paper: Genome-Wide and Phase-Specific DNA-Binding Rhythms of BMAL1 Control Circadian Output Functions in Mouse Live

2010

Laureate: Rajesh Ramaswamy, read the interview
Affiliation: MOSAIC Group, Ivo Sbalzarini, SIB & ETH Zurich
Paper: A new class of highly efficient exact stochastic simulation algorithms for chemical reaction networks

2009

Laureate: Julien Roux, read the interview
Affiliation: Evolutionary Bioinformatics Group, Marc Robinson-Rechavi group , SIB & University of Lausanne
Paper: Developmental Constraints on Vertebrate Genome Evolution

Early Career Award

2021

Laureate: Heba Sailem, watch her presentation at the [BC]2 conference
Affiliation: University of Oxford, UK
Project: KCML: a Machine Learning framework for inference of multi-scale gene functions from genetic perturbation screens

2019

Laureate: Eleonora Porcu, watch her presentation at the [BC]2 conference
Affiliation: SIB & University of Lausanne, Zoltán Kutalik group, Switzerland
Project: A statistical approach for dissecting the causal molecular underpinning of complex diseases

2017

Laureate: Sebastian Waszak
Affiliation: EMBL, Jan Korbel Group, Germany
Project: His outstanding work in computational and statistical biology

2015

Laureate: Shijulal Nelson-Sathi, read the interview
Affiliation: Institute of Molecular Evolution, Prof. Dr William Martin, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany
Project: Major gene fluxes in prokaryote evolution

2014

Laureate: Joshua Payne, read the interview
Affiliation: Evolutionary Systems Biology, Andreas Wagner group, SIB & University of Zurich, Switzerland
Project: The Robustness and Evolvability of Transcription Factor Binding Sites

2013 

Laureate: Anamaria Necsulea, read the interview
Affiliation: Functional Evolutionary Genomics, Henrik Kaessmann, SIB & University of Lausanne
Project: The evolution of vertebrate tissue transcriptomes

2012

Laureate: Christophe Dessimoz, read the interview
Affiliation: Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Marc Robinson-Rechavi group, SIB & University of Lausanne (co-supervised with the EBI- European Bioinformatics Institute)
Project: Resolving the ortholog conjecture: orthologs tend to be weakly, but significantly, more similar in function than paralogs

2011

Laureate: Nacho Molina, read the interview
Affiliation: Computational Systems Biology Lab, Felix Naef group, SIB & EPFL
Project: Mammalian genes are transcribed with widely different bursting kinetics

2010

Laureate: Aitana Neves, read the interview
Affiliation: Computational Biology Group, Sven Bergmann, SIB & University of Lausanne
Project: Precision and Scaling in Developmental Patterning

2009

Laureate: Lukas Burger, read the interview
Affiliation: Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Group, Erik van Nimwegen group, Biozentrum, SIB & University of Basel
Project: How to predict physical interactions between protein residues entirely based on sequence data, using multiple sequence alignments of similar proteins

Innovative Resource Award

2021

Resource: Nextflow, enabling scalable and reproducible scientific workflows using software containers
Represented by: Cédric Notredame, watch the presentation at the [BC]2 conference
Affiliation: Centre for Genomic Regulation, Spain
Project owner: Sequera labs

2019

Resource: Velocyto - a new framework for the analysis of RNA velocity in single-cell RNAseq data
Represented by: Sten Linnarsson, watch the presentation at the [BC]2 conference
Affiliation: Linnarsson Lab, Karolinska Institute, Sweden
Project owner: Jointly developed by the Linnarsson Lab, Gioele La Manno (EPFL), Peter Kharchenko (Harvard) and Ruslan Soldatov (Harvard).

2017

Resource: RepurposeDB - Reference Database of Drug Repositioning Investigations
Represented by: Shameer Khader, read the interview
Affiliation: Dudley Lab, Institute for Genomics and Multiscale Biology, Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, USA
Project owner: Joel Dudley

2015

Resource: ABySS, Assembly By Short Sequences - a de novo, parallel, paired-end sequence assembler
Represented by: Inanc Birol, read the interview
Affiliation: Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, BC Cancer Agency
Project owner: Anthony Raymond