Mathieu Daniel Blanchette is a computational biologist and Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

. His research focuses on developing new algorithms for the detection of functional regions in DNA sequences.

Education

Blanchette studied

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

(1997) level, before studying computer science at

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

(1998) level, both at the

Université de Montréal The Université de Montréal (UdeM; ; translates to University of Montreal) is a French-language public research university in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The university's main campus is located in the Côte-des-Neiges neighborhood of Côte-de ...

. He gained his PhD from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

in 2002, under the supervision of Martin Tompa. His thesis, titled ''Algorithms for phylogenetic footprinting'', presented the first reasonable algorithm for gene order

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...

and elaborated on

phylogenetic footprinting Phylogenetic footprinting is a technique used to identify transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) within a non-coding region of DNA of interest by comparing it to the orthologous sequence in different species. When this technique is used with a l ...

. Following this, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California syste ...

, working with David Haussler.

Research

Blanchette became Associate Professor in the McGill University School of Computer Science in 2002. His research focuses on developing computational methods for detecting functional regions in DNA sequences. His postdoctoral work developed algorithms for reconstructing ancestral mammalian genomes. His recent work continues this path, particularly with regard to developing algorithms for inferring gene regulation.

Awards and honours

Blanchette was awarded the ISCB

Overton Prize The ISCB Overton Prize is a Awards in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, computational biology prize awarded annually for outstanding accomplishment by a scientist in the early to mid stage of his or her career. Laureates have made significan ...

in 2006, recognising his "fundamental, highly cited contributions in several areas of bioinformatics". He was awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2007. Blanchette has served on the Editorial Board of the journal '' Genome Research'' and as of 2014, serves on the Editorial Board of the journal ''Algorithms for Molecular Biology''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Blanchette, Mathieu Canadian bioinformaticians Living people Université de Montréal alumni University of Washington alumni Academic staff of McGill University Overton Prize winners Year of birth missing (living people)