Francis Ouellette

Last updated
B.F. Francis Ouellette
Francis Ouellette.jpg
Ouellette in 2025
Born (1960-06-03) June 3, 1960 (age 65)
Quebec City, Québec, Canada
Alma mater McGill University, University of Calgary
Known forBioinformatics training in Canada, Open Science advocacy, GenBank coordination, ISCB leadership
Children2
Scientific career
Fields Bioinformatics, Genomics, Computational Biology
Institutions McGill University, National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), University of British Columbia, Ontario Institute for Cancer Research, Genome Québec


B. F. Francis Ouellette (born 3 June 1960) is a Canadian bioinformatician whose work has focused on biological databases, genome annotation, and bioinformatics training.

Contents

Career

Ouellette began his career at McGill University in the early 1990s, where he worked on sequencing Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome I. [1]

From 1993 to 1998 Ouellette worked at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Institutes of Health, where he coordinated GenBank sequence submissions. [2]

From 1998 to 2007 he held positions at the University of British Columbia, including director of the CMMT Bioinformatics Core and of the UBC Bioinformatics Centre (UBiC). He was also associate professor in the Department of Medical Genetics and the Michael Smith Laboratories. During this period his research focused on genome annotation, gene prediction, and integrative bioinformatics platforms. He also helped develop one of Canada's early graduate programs in bioinformatics with colleagues at UBC and SFU.

Between 2007 and 2017 Ouellette was associate director of informatics and biocomputing at the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR), where he led data‑management and software projects associated with the ICGC. He later served as chief scientific officer at Genome Québec (2017–2018) and executive director of the Neuro Bioinformatics Core Facility at the Montréal Neurological Institute (2021–2022). As of 2025 he works as an independent consultant and participates in editorial and advisory activities.

He also directed the Canadian Bioinformatics Workshops program (bioinformatics.ca), which offered short courses and training events in bioinformatics across Canada from 1999 to 2021.

Research

Ouellette's research has included work on biological databases, genome annotation, and computational approaches for integrating biological data. He contributed to the development and curation of the Biomolecular Interaction Network Database (BIND), a database of biomolecular interactions described in the Nucleic Acids Research database issues. [3] [4]

Ouellette has also published on community practices for biological databases, data sharing, and bioinformatics training. His work includes articles on maintaining the accuracy of public biological databases, [5] community standards for describing biological databases, [6] and bioinformatics training initiatives. [7]

Education

Publications

Ouellette co-edited Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins with Andreas Baxevanis, published in three editions by Wiley between 1998 and 2005. [8]

Professional Services and Recognitions

Ouellette has served on several scientific advisory boards in genomics and bioinformatics, including those of the Saccharomyces Genome Database (2003–2024), [9] H3ABioNet (2013–2024), [10] and ELIXIR Europe (2016–2025). [11]

He has served as Associate Editor of DATABASE: The Journal of Biological Databases and Curation since 2008, [12] and as Section Editor for education at PLOS Computational Biology since 2013. [13]

Ouellette was President of the Functional Genomics Data Society from 2013 to 2021 and served on the Genome Canada Science Industry Advisory Committee from 2013 to 2017. [14]

He has been involved with the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), serving as co-chair of ISMB 2020, [15] honorary chair of ISMB 2024, [16] and as a member of the ISCB Board of Directors beginning in 2026. [17]

Ouellette was elected a Fellow of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2023. [18]

He has served on the board of directors of the JXTX Foundation since 2022. [19]

References

  1. ↑ Bussey, Howard; Kaback, David B.; Zhong, Wu Wei; Vo, Dahn T.; Clark, Michael W.; Fortin, Nathalie; Hall, John; Ouellette, B. F. Francis; Keng, Teresa; Barton, Arnold B.; Su, Yuping; Davies, Chris J.; Storms, Reg K. (25 April 1995). "The nucleotide sequence of chromosome I from Saccharomyces cerevisiae". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 92 (9): 3809–3813. doi:10.1073/pnas.92.9.3809.
  2. ↑ Watanabe, Myrna (1 April 2004). "Changing of the guard". Nature. 428 (6980): 584–585. doi:10.1038/nj6982-584a.
  3. ↑ Bader, Gary D.; Betel, Dorothy; Hogue, Christopher W. V. (2001). "BIND: the Biomolecular Interaction Network Database". Nucleic Acids Research. 29 (1): 242–245. doi:10.1093/nar/29.1.242.
  4. ↑ Alfarano, Claudia (2005). "The Biomolecular Interaction Network Database and related tools". Nucleic Acids Research. 33 (suppl_1): D418–D424. doi:10.1093/nar/gki051.
  5. ↑ Ouellette, F. (2001). "Users must help to keep public databases correct". Nature. 409 (6819): 452. doi:10.1038/35054237.
  6. ↑ Gaudet, P.; Bairoch, A. (2011). "Towards BioDBcore: a community-defined information specification for biological databases". Database. 2011: baq027. doi:10.1093/database/baq027.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link)
  7. ↑ Brazas, M. D.; Ouellette, B. F. (2016). "Continuing Education Workshops in Bioinformatics Positively Impact Research and Careers". PLoS Computational Biology. 12 (6): e1004916. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004916.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: article number as page number (link) CS1 maint: unflagged free DOI (link)
  8. ↑ Baxevanis, Andreas D.; Ouellette, B. F. Francis (2005). Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN   978-0471478782.
  9. ↑ "Member of the SGD SAB". Saccharomyces Genome Database. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  10. ↑ "Chair and Member of the H3ABioNet SAB". H3ABioNet. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  11. ↑ "Chair and Member of the ELIXIR Europe SAB". ELIXIR. Archived from the original on 2024-12-13. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  12. ↑ "Associate Editor, DATABASE". Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  13. ↑ "Section Editor, PLOS Computational Biology". PLOS Computational Biology. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  14. ↑ "Member of the Genome Canada Science Industry Advisory Committee". Genome Canada. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  15. ↑ "Co-Chair, Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology". ISCB. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  16. ↑ "Honorary Chair, ISMB 2024". ISCB. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  17. ↑ "Member, Board of Directors for the ISCB". ISCB. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  18. ↑ "ISCB Fellows". ISCB. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
  19. ↑ "Member of the JXTX Board of directors". JXTX Foundation. Retrieved 2025-10-14.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.