C U R R I C U L U M   V I T A E

Personal:

Name: Philipp Bucher.
date of birth: August 6, 1955 (Zürich, Switzerland).
Marital status: Married/separated, three children
Citizenship: Swiss
Professional address: Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC)
and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB)
Ch. des boveresses 155
CH-1066 Epalinges s/Lausanne
Switzerland
Phone: +41-21-692-5892, Fax: +41-21-692-5945, Email: Philipp.Bucher@isrec.unil.ch
Education/Experience:
1962 - 1968 Primary school in Zürich.
1968 - 1974 High school in Zürich (Literargymnasium Rämibuhl). Degree: Federal matriculation exam type A.
1974 - 1980 Studies in molecular biology at University of Zürich. Degree: Diploma in molecular biology. Title of diploma thesis: "Sequence analyses of histone genes in the sea urchin species Psammechinus miliaris; the complete sequence of an H1 gene expressed at early stages of embryonic development." (Advisor: Dr. M.L. Birnstiel).
1981 - 1982 Beginning of researches in computer applications to nucleic acid sequences with Dr. M.L. Birnstiel at University of Zürich. Development of computer programs for comparative DNA sequence analysis. Joint work with Dr. T. Koller on left-handed DNA.
1983 Research on plant histone genes with Dr. L. Hirth at IBMC Strasbourg, France.
1984 System analyst at the computer center of ALUSUISSE, Zürich. Redesign and conversion of software packages.
1985 - 1989 Ph.D. with Dr. E.N. Trifonov at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Title of Ph.D. thesis: "Comparative analysis of eukaryotic promoters and development of computer algorithms to characterize nucleotide sequence patterns positionally correlated with a biological site".
1988 Short stay at EMBL, Heidelberg, Germany. Preparation of first EPD (Eukaryotic Promoter Database) release with Drs. Graham Cameron and David Hazledine.
1989 - 1991 Postdoctoral research position with Dr. S. Karlin at Stanford University. Statistical analyses of protein sequences. Continuation of work on EPD and comparative sequence analysis of eukaryotic promoters.
1991 Short stay at NCBI, Bethesda, USA. Conversion of EPD into ASN.1 format with Dr. James Ostell.
1991 - 1995 Postdoctoral research position at ISREC, Epalinges s/Lausanne. Improvement of the sequence profile methodology. Design and introduction of a new profile structure and format for the PROSITE databank of protein motifs. Various collaborations with experimental groups. Maintenance of EPD.
Teaching: Practical courses in computer-aided molecular sequence analysis.
1995 - 1999 Associate scientist at ISREC. Further improvements of the generalised profile technique. Development of the pftools software package. Discovery of several new protein domains. Adaptation of the profile technique to in silico gene discovery applications. Reorganisation and introduction of a new format of EPD as part of an EC-funded international collaboration (TRADAT project). Various collaborations with experimental groups.
Teaching: Practical and theoretical courses in computer-aided molecular sequence analysis. Advanced courses in genomics and genome sequence analysis.
Current Position:
2000 - Senier scientist at ISREC. Research on conserved protein domains and gene regulatory regions. Development of new algorithms and software for comparative genomics and protein sequence analysis. Characterization of transcription factor binding sites by experiental and computational methods. Maintenance of the promoter and gene expression databases EPD ( http://www.epd.isb-sib.ch/) and CleanEx ( http://www.cleanex.isb-sib.ch/). Development of the Signal Search Analysis (SSA) server ( http://www.isrec.isb-sib.ch/ssa/).
Teaching: Module "Sequence Analysis" of the joint "Masters in Bioinformatics" program of the Universities of Lausanne and Geneva.

Additional affiliation: Group leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB).

Research grants:
  • Swiss National Science Foundation 31-49669.93 "Characterization of biomolecular sequence patterns by profiles: Improvement of current methodology and development of a database" (1994-1997)
  • Swiss National Science Foundation 31-49669.96 "Characterization of biomolecular sequence patterns by generalised profiles" (1997-2001)
  • EC Biotechnology Programme 2 / No. OFES 95.0236-1 "TRADAT: Transcription Databases and Analysis Tools" (1996-1999)
  • Swiss National Science Foundations 31-54782.98 "Maintenance and extension of the Eukaryotic Promoter Database EPD" (1998-2000)
  • EC Biotechnology Programme 2 / No. OFES 98.0202-2 "INTERPRO: The creation of an integrated resource of protein domains and functional sites and its application to accelerate protein functional analysis" (1998-2000)
  • Swiss National Science Foundation 3100-063933.00 "Development of bioinformatics tools for quantitative modeling of gene expression" (2001-2004)
  • Swiss National Science Foundation 3100A0-104248 "New, bioionformatics-driven approaches for cancer genomics" (2004-)