International Society for Computational Biology Welcomes Its Newest Class of Fellows

Computational biology and bioinformatics have grown into cutting-edge interdisciplinary fields essential to every realm of basic research in this age of modern genomics and open-source software. In light of this, the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) saw a need to estabish a program for the organization that recognized its members who made significant contributions to the fields, as well as service to the Society. A task force led by Mona Singh was formed to develop a program to recognize and honor this unique group of researchers. In early 2009, ISCB established its Fellows Program. The first group elected into this distinguished group were past recipients of the ISCB Accomplishment by a Senior Scientist Award, which was established in 2003. Since then, Fellows have been identified through a rigorous process involving a call for nominations from the ISCB membership and selection by the Fellows Selection Committee, which in past years has included the ISCB Board of Directors and previously selected Fellows. The distinction of an ISCB Fellow is based on: Nomination by an ISCB member submitting a short endorsement for the nominee, a detailed half-page statement of motivation justifying the nominee, and a CV of the nominee. Nominees must have demonstrated excellence in research, service to the ISCB community, education, and/or administration. Nominees must have been a member of the Society for at least three of the last six years. Selection of new Fellows each year is limited to half of one percent of the previous year's membership and includes the Senior Scientist Award winner. The 2013 ISCB Fellows epitomize the mission of ISCB to advance scientific understanding of living systems through computation and clearly fulfill the goals of the Fellows Program. Each Fellow has made outstanding contributions to computational biology through research, teaching, and service to the scientific community. On behalf of the ISCB Board of Directors and Fellows Committee, congratulations!