Ron David Appel (born 13 April 1959) is a

Swiss Swiss most commonly refers to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Swiss may also refer to: Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina * Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses * Swiss Café, an old café located ...

bioinformatician, professor of

proteomics Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital macromolecules of all living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replicatio ...

and

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

at the

University of Geneva The University of Geneva (French: ''Université de Genève'') is a public university, public research university located in Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded in 1559 by French theologian John Calvin as a Theology, theological seminary. It rema ...

and executive director of the

Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics The SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics is an academic not-for-profit foundation which federates bioinformatics activities throughout Switzerland. The institute was established on 30 March 1998 and its mission is to provide core bioinform ...

Education

Ron Appel graduated in computer sciences at the

, where he also received his Ph.D. in 1987, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at

Harvard School of Public Health The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is the public health school at Harvard University, located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston, Massachusetts. It was named after Hong Kong entrepreneur Chan Tseng-hsi in 2014 following a US$350 ...

Career

He was co-founder in 1998 of the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, where he led the Proteome Informatics Group (PIG). The group developed proteomics software and databases, in particular the Melanie 2-D gel electrophoresis analysis software and the SWISS-2DPAGE database, as well as tools for the identification and characterisation of proteins using mass spectrometry. Ron Appel is also the initiator of and co-responsible for ExPASy, the world's first Web site dedicated to protein

molecular biology Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

, which has now become SIB’s main resource portal. It provides access to scientific databases and software tools in different areas of the life sciences including

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of molecular biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, ...

transcriptomics Transcriptomics technologies are the techniques used to study an organism's transcriptome, the sum of all of its RNA, RNA transcripts. The information content of an organism is recorded in the DNA of its genome and Gene expression, expressed throu ...

phylogeny A phylogenetic tree or phylogeny is a graphical representation which shows the evolutionary history between a set of species or Taxon, taxa during a specific time.Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, M ...

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological system ...

population genetics Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as Adaptation (biology), adaptation, s ...

, etc. He is also the scientific co-founder of two biotechnology companies in Geneva: one in bioinformatics - Geneva Bioinformatics (GeneBio) SA - and the other one in high-throughput proteomics - GeneProt, that ceased operations in 2005. Founding member of SIB, he is part of SIB’s Foundation Council and of the institute’s Board of Directors. He is also on the Executive Board of the

Health On the Net Foundation Health On the Net Foundation (HON) was a Swiss not-for-profit organization based in Geneva which promoted a code of conduct for websites providing health information and offered certificates to those in compliance. In September 2022, Health On t ...

(HON) and member of the Foundation Council of OsiriX and of the Foundation Council of the Hasler Foundation. He is co-author of three books, and 90 articles in peer-reviewed journals and has been part of several editorial boards (

Proteomics Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital macromolecules of all living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replicatio ...

Awards

Ron received “the Man of the Year 2002” reward from the Agefi SA
Quotidien de l’Agence économique et Financière à Genève
. He also received th

The BioAlps Award intends to honour a personality without whom western Switzerland would not enjoy its extraordinary international reputation in the field of life sciences.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Appel, Ron 1959 births Living people Swiss bioinformaticians