Vital-IT / High Performance Computing Center

is the Director of Vital-IT a high performance-computing center dedicated to life science research at the University of Lausanne. He received a Ph.D in immunology at the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research and the Institute of Biochemistry. He worked on the development of the Database of Interacting Proteins (DIP) under the supervision of Prof. David Eisenberg at the University of California Los Angeles. He then became the head of Translational Bioinformatics at Serono (now Merck Serono) where his group developed computational methodologies in the area of proteomics, microarray and genetics. He is one of the Principal investigators of the ENFIN project aiming at providing methods in dynamical systems modeling.

took a Master's in Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 1987 and then continued to a PhD thesis at CERN in Geneva. In 1993 he became a database developer for the Cardiology Center of the Geneva university hospital, and in 1997 joined the future Swiss Institute of BioInformatics as a systems engineer. From 2000 to 2003 he worked as High Performance Computing manager at GeneProt and led its effort to set up what was at the time the world's most powerful civilian computer farm. He is now the IT manager for Vital-IT.

studied biochemistry at the University of Geneva and obtained a PhD in 1997. He joined the newly created Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics in 1998 as member of the EMBnet team where he was responsible for organizing undergraduate and post-graduate courses, and was involved in teaching activities as well. In addition, he was responsible of the help desk support to the life sciences community, which led to a number of collaborations, and was in charge of several web sites.
In 2002 he became manager of the Swiss EMBnet node. Within the EMBnet organisation he was chief editor of the EMBnet.news newsletter from 2003 to 2005 and was secretary of the EMBnet Executive Board from 2007 to 2009. Since 2008 he is president of the sub-committee for biochemistry and fundamental medicine of the 3eme cycle romand in Biological Sciences and member of the SIB PhD network committee. He joined the Vital-IT team in 2009, with responsibility for the genome assembly, annotation and comparative genomics.

was raised in France. He then moved to Germany to study Computer Science at the University of Kaiserslautern, followed by the university of Lausanne where he obtained a diploma in Biology in 1998. He also obtained a Masters degree in Bioinformatics in Lausanne in 2001. Immediately after, he started working at the SIB in Dr. Philipp Bucher's group, maintaining the sequence analysis package 'pftools' as well as system administrative tasks on the SIB's Lausanne computer infrastructure. In 2004, he joined the Vital-IT team, working as junior system administrator and software programmer specializing in adapting and optimizing life-science applications for the Vital-IT cluster architecture.

studied plant biology and biochemistry at the University of Lausanne. In the early nineties, during the course of his PhD, he pioneered the use of molecular biology in the Institute of Plant Biology, isolated and sequenced two genes of the glyoxylate cycle, built a molecular model for one of them and initiated the development of Swiss-PdbViewer. He obtained his PhD in 1995 and joined the group of Manuel Peitsch at GlaxoWellcome, where he contributed to the development of Swiss-Model. From 1996-2002, he also taught postgrade Structural Biology modules at the University of Geneva, EPFL and for the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics.

During his 12 years at GlaxoSmithKline, he occupied positions of increasing responsibilities, led a group specialized in Evolutionary and Structural Bioinformatics and contributed to several drug discovery research programs.

Nicolas has been developing and optimizing computer software since 1979, and joined the Vital-IT team in 2008 where he continues the development of Swiss-PdbViewer, contributes his bioinformatics and biology expertise to research groups and develop specialized software to support research projects that necessitate high performance computing.

studied biology at the University of Lausanne where he obtained, in 1997, his Diploma in virology and molecular oncology and in 2001, his PhD in immunology. He then went on to obtain a Master in Bioinformatics from the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva in 2002.
In 2002, he joined the Swiss EMBnet node at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics as Bioinformatician where he was responsible for organizing undergraduate and post-graduate courses, and was involved in teaching activities as well. He was also member of the EMBnet Education and Training Project Committee. In addition, he participated in providing help desk support to the life sciences community, which led to a number of collaborations, and was in charge of several web sites.
In 2009, he joined the Vital-IT group where he continues these activities and is now a member of the SIB web-team.

educated at Moscow State University as a physico-chemist in 1982. During the next 15 years, he was working at the Institute of Molecular Biology (Russia) doing both experimental assays (enzymatic kinetics and NMR) and modelling of protein structures. He obtained his PhD in biophysics on structure modelling of MHC-TCR protein complex in collaboration with the Ludwig Institute of Cancer Research (LICR) in Lausanne. He spent the next 8 years in Lausanne working for the LICR as a database administrator (DBA) and web developer in various bioinformatic projects. After joining the Vital-IT team in 2007, he continues to work as a DBA and developer on the MySQL and Oracle platform.

studied plant biology at the University of Lausanne where he obtained his diploma in 1999. He then obtained a master in bioinformatics from the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva in 2001. In 2005, he obtained his PhD on signaling pathways leading to plant defense by combining gene expression, proteomics and bioinformatics analyses. Since 2006 he is working at Vital-IT for the EuroDia european project on type 2 diabetes. He is developing a web-based relational database to store, annotate, combine and analyze gene expression data obtained with various technologies and different model organisms. This system offers user-friendly web interface to several bioconductor statistical packages. Robin is also involved in setting up openfludb, a database to share Influenza genetical and epidemiological data.

has worked for fifteen years in the computer industry. She first worked for nearly eight years for Stoner Associates, developing simulation software for oil and gas transmission pipelines. Afterwards she worked for four years for BMC Software on application management, streamlining the ever-increasing burden of managing large, complex software systems, with a particular focus on computer security issues in application management. Since 2003, she has worked for the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, developing tools for researchers to investigate large amounts of bio-data, and in particular on the BioConductor platform.

studied Biology at the University of Lausanne where he obtained his Diploma in 2001. A year later he obtained a Master in Bioinformatics at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne. He then worked in the field of web/software development for several years, mainly specializing into Java programming language. In 2006 he joined the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and quickly after that, Vital-IT team, as a bioinformatician/software developer. He has been involved since in the developement of AssociationViewer, a flexible and scalable application for visualization of large-scale genomic data.

studied biology at the University of Lyon where he obtained, in 1999, his Diploma in Population Biology and Ecosystems. He then went on to obtain a Master in Population Biology, Genetics and Eco- ethology (with a specialisation in Entomology) from the University of Tours. A year later he obtained a Master in Bioinformatics from the University of Paris 7.
In 2002, he joined the Genoplante consortium to cluster and annotate Sunflower ESTs, in Toulouse. In 2003, he joined the Genomic and Structural Information lab. (CNRS) in Marseilles, in collaboration with the Aventis pharmaceutical group, to work on Kinase proteins and on Multiple Sequence Alignments tools. Then, in 2006, he joined the Swiss EMBnet node at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and the Department of Ecology & Evolution (DEE) in Lausanne, as Bioinformatician. Since, for EMBnet, he is developing tools for the MyHits web server, maintaining and adding tools for our Soaplab-based Web Services. For the DEE, he is developing Selectome, a database of Positive Selection, Bgee, a database for Gene Expression Evolution, as well as doing system administration.
In 2009, he joined the Vital-IT group where he continues these activities and is now a member of the SIB web-team.

studied biology at the University of Neuchâtel and obtained a PhD in microbiology. In 1998, he joined the newly created Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics and has since collaborated with several groups on topics related to sequence analysis, sequence automated annotation, database design and management and large-scale computation. He joined the Vital-IT team in 2005, with responsibility for the maintenance and development of the MyHits web server and associated database.

Marco Pagni is also a partner of the EMBRACE European funded project.

is a Physics engineer. He studied at the Swiss Institute of Technology in Lausanne and obtained his diploma in theoretical Physics in 2001 on Random matrices. He then worked on a Phd Thesis applying High Performance Computing in the field of Quantum Chaos. During his studies, he also worked as a part-time software programer and system administrator for several small businesses.

is a computer scientist and specialist in Grid and distributed computing. He previously worked in international Grid projects at CERN (Geneva) and SLAC (USA) in various functions. He joined Vital-IT in 2006 to work for the EMBRACE Grid project. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Swiss National Grid Association (SwiNG). Heinz was appointed «Privatdozent» at the University of Vienna (Faculty of Computer Science), where he was leading the Research Lab for Computational Technologies and Applicat in 2005. Currently, he also has a teaching appointment at EPFL. Heinz holds a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Business Administration from the University of Vienna, Austria.