2014 ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award: Gene Myers

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB; http://www.iscb. org) annually recognizes a senior scientist for his or her outstanding achievements. The ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award honors a leader in the field of computational biology for his or her significant contributions to the community through research, service, and education. Dr. Eugene ‘‘Gene’’ Myers of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden has been selected as the 2014 ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award winner. Myers (Image 1) was selected by the ISCB’s awards committee, which is chaired by Dr. Bonnie Berger of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Myers will receive his award and deliver a keynote address at ISCB’s 22nd Annual Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) meeting. This meeting is being held in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 11–15, 2014, at the John B. Hynes Memorial Convention Center (https:// www.iscb.org/ismb2014). Myers was captivated by computer programming as a young student. He remembered his fascination being stoked by a realization and recalls, ‘‘A computer is a programmable device, and once programmed, is a specific device for doing something that I conceived of. I found this magical.’’ He completed a BS in mathematics at the California Institute of Technology, but his interest in biology came during his PhD studies at the University of Colorado in the late 1970s. Myers recounted that he initially considered molecular biology as ‘‘a source of interesting computational questions.’’ He was studying computer science under the guidance of his dissertation advisor, Andrzej Ehrenfeucht, who had eclectic interests that included molecular biology. Myers, along with fellow graduate students and future bioinformaticians Gary Stormo and David Haussler, was drawn by Ehrenfeucht’s curiosity about such basic questions as how to compare DNA sequences and how to build evolutionary trees. Myers landed his first faculty position in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. Throughout his research career, he has been interested in sequence assembly. ‘‘I first started thinking about this problem in 1984,’’ he recollected.