Olivier Gascuel


Olivier Gascuel is a French researcher in bioinformatics. He is a research director at the CNRS. His work focuses in particular on phylogeny. Since March 2015, he has directed the Centre for Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Integrative Biology at the Pasteur Institute.

Biography

In 1975, Olivier Gascuel joined the École normale supérieure de Cachan, where he studied mathematics and then specialized in computer science. In parallel, he studied architecture.
In 1981, he defended a doctoral thesis on expert systems for medical diagnosis, then joined the CNRS as a research fellow.
He joined the Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics in 1987, and since then has focused his research on phylogeny. More recently, he has oriented part of his activities towards pathogens.
In 2000, together with Marie-France Sagot, he initiated the annual JOBIM conference, the "Journées Ouvertes en Biologie, Informatique et Mathématiques", now organized by the French Society of Bioinformatics.

Awards