Olivier Gascuel (born 1956) is a French researcher in bioinformatics. He is a research director at the CNRS. His work focuses in particular on phylogeny. He was the director of the Centre for Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Integrative Biology at the Pasteur Institute from 2015 till 2020. In 2021, he joined the Institute of Systematics, Evolution, Biodiversity (ISYEB)Olivier Gascuel - MNHN at the National Museum of Natural History, France.
Biography In 1975, Olivier Gascuel joined the École normale supérieure de Cachan,Institut Pasteur: Olivier Gascuel, grand prix INRIA - Académie des sciences 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,BioinfoFR: Questions à ... Olivier Gascuel, entretien réalisé en 2013 then joined the CNRS as a research fellow.
He joined the Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics (LIRMM) 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" (Open Days in Biology, Informatics and Mathematics), now organized by the French Society of Bioinformatics (SFBI)..
Awards
In 2009, Olivier Gascuel was awarded the CNRS silver medal. In 2017, he is the winner of the Grand Prix Inria - Académie des sciences. Member of the French Academy of sciences in the integrative biology section,Olivier Gascuel - Académie des sciences since 2019.« Dix-huit nouveaux membres élus à l’Académie des sciences »
Books
Sylvie Thiria, Olivier Gascuel and Yves Lechevallier, Statistique et méthodes neuronales, Éditions Dunod, 1997, 311 p. (). (en) Olivier Gascuel, Mathematics of Evolution and Phylogeny, Oxford University Press, 2005, 416 p. ().
References