The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) presented Amos Bairoch with the 2025 Accomplishments by a Senior Scientist Award today, in recognition of his leadership and innovation in the development of bioinformatics resources and infrastructure. This prestigious recognition highlights Geneva and Switzerland’s pioneering contribution to, and ongoing excellence in, the provision of open data, knowledge, and tools for the life sciences.
The award ceremony took place at the joint 33rd Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) annual conference and 24th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) being held in Liverpool, UK. Amos Bairoch also gave a keynote talk at the event today, reflecting on 40 years of biocuration.
A pioneer in bioinformatics
Amos Bairoch is emeritus professor at the University of Geneva and co-founder and group leader at SIB. His innovative and pioneering contributions to bioinformatics include:
The award ceremony took place at the joint 33rd Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) annual conference and 24th European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) being held in Liverpool, UK. Amos Bairoch also gave a keynote talk at the event today, reflecting on 40 years of biocuration.
- introducing the idea of analysing DNA and protein sequences on personal computers (early 1980s) instead of large, shared institutional mainframe computers;
- creating the first Swiss-Prot release (1986) with nearly 4,000 curated protein sequence entries and the precursor to UniProt (see below);
- creating the PROSITE database (1988) of protein families and domains, which enables the identification of protein functions;
- creating the ENZYME database (1990), which became indispensable for the development of metabolic databases;
- co-launching Expasy, the Swiss bioinformatics resource portal (1993) – the first life science web portal and among the first 150 websites in the world;
- co-founding SIB (1998) to support the long-term stability of bioinformatics research in Switzerland;
- co-founding UniProt (2002), the world’s leading high-quality, comprehensive, and freely accessible resource of protein sequence and functional information, building on Swiss-Prot – since recognized as an ELIXIR Core Data Resource and Global Core Biodata Resource;
- creating Cellosaurus (2012), the first central knowledge resource for cell lines and since recognized as an ELIXIR Core Data Resource and Global Core Biodata Resource.
A truly well-deserved recognition for Amos, as a pioneer and visionary who has shaped bioinformatics throughout his career. His work has set the gold standard for biocuration, open data, and quality resources that countless life science researchers rely on every day.
A leader in data curation
Amos Bairoch was instrumental in setting the standard for data curation: a highly specialized process where relevant information from scientific literature and other reliable sources is continuously added to data in databases. In UniProt, for example, this involves annotating protein sequences with knowledge on the proteins’ structure, function, and more, through combined expertise in bioinformatics and protein biology.
In addition to performing the task himself, Amos Bairoch also trained biocurators before formal or standardized training programs existed. Expert data curation continues to be a fundamental part of SIB’s work – making Geneva and Switzerland a biocuration ‘hub’, and contributing to the tremendous value of our data resources in accelerating life science discoveries.
See the role of data curation in trustworthy AI
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Image credit: Jacqueline Brunner
