Churchill Fellow Professor Richard Durbin FRS has been awarded the 2017 Gabor Medal for his outstanding contributions to computational biology, and their impact across many areas of the life sciences.
Awarded by the Royal Society every alternate year, the Gabor Medal acknowledges distinction of interdisciplinary work between the life sciences with other disciplines.
Professor Durbin recieves the 2017 award in recognition of over 25 years of work developing leading-edge software tools and computational approaches that form the foundation of genomic and genetic analysis across the globe.
As a Senior Group Leader and joint Head of Human Genetics at The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Dr Durbin has been instrumental in supporting the growth of computational biology, from sequencing the nematode worm in 1998 and the first human genome in 2002 to exploring genomic variation at scale, first by analysing 1000 and then 10,000 genomes.
Commenting on this award Professor Durbin said:
“I am very honoured to be recognised by the Royal Society in this way. I am proud that, working with inspiring colleagues around the world, we have helped the global research community to harness the power of genetics and genomics.
We are committed to ensuring that biological data are freely available and maximally useful. It is wonderful to see how researchers are using our data and software to explore areas as diverse as evolution, inherited disease, cancer and the transmission of infections.”
Professor Durbin will receive a medal, and a gift of £2,000 at the Society’s Anniversary Day meeting on 30 November 2017.
