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History of SFBI

A brief history of SFBI | 20 years of JOBIM | Previous board members

A brief history of SFBI

The renaissance of bioinformatics in France took place thanks to a school organised in Massy-Palaiseau at the beginning of April 1991 by Alain Hénaut. He invited the biggest names in French molecular biology to present the methodological problems involved in analysing DNA, RNA or amino acid sequences. They all spoke to an audience of researchers and lecturers who were experts in mathematics and computer science and who were willing to supervise theses on these topics. I was lucky enough to attend this meeting. We were shown the problems involved: sequencing (assembling pieces of sequences), searching for similar sequences in a sequence database, predicting the two- and three-dimensional structures of RNAs and proteins, efficiently searching for common or specific motifs (exact or approximate) between two or more sequences, molecular phylogeny, and so on. At the end of these five days, I was completely hooked on this research theme.

I say renaissance and not birth, because there was of course research in this field, if only at the Génoscope (not yet in Evry, but which was already offering human genome sequences strongly coloured with those of yeast), or in teams from pioneering laboratories such as the LBBE in Lyon or the Atelier de Bioinformatique (ABI) in Paris.

The Massy-Palaiseau school has given rise to a GDR of genomes and informatics, working groups on various bioinformatics research topics and a committee in charge of drafting calls for research projects, selecting them and distributing the credits granted by the CNRS. This committee of experts functioned for several years and ended up being called a ‘self-distribution committee’ because of the size of the share of credit that its members allocated to themselves! It also organized an annual national meeting, where mainly PhD students came to present their thesis work. At the time, the bioinformatics community was not very large - around a hundred researchers and lecturers - and everyone knew who was doing what in the Info-Bio-Math world, as it should have been called. It was at this time that the real thematic working groups were born (for example, the Alphy group created in 1992), which organized their own meetings.

In 2000, Olivier Gascuel, who was setting up his own team in Montpellier, and Marie-France Sagot from the Institut Pasteur, decided to organize a real symposium, with guest speakers from abroad, a selective program committee and published proceedings (LNCS). Marie-France's Brazilian origins had a major influence on the symposium name: JOBIM. The first edition took place in Montpellier in autumn 2000. Given its success, the series was extended and a committee (known as the JOBIM Historical Channel) appointed by the founders was responsible for appointing future organizers, based on the few proposals that had to be put forward. I was a member of this committee for some years, and I felt that the info-bio-math community lacked structure.

I came from a maths-info family in which learned societies were the order of the day, like the famous SMF, largely subsidized by the CNRS. More modestly, the Société Française de Classification (SFC), a member of the International Federation of the Classification Societies (IFCS), organized national (every year) and international (every two years) colloquia and published a newsletter (News and Books), and it seemed to me that it was time to do the same. In agreement with the JOBIM committee, which was ready to entrust it with its functions, I embarked on the administrative procedures to create an association under the 1901 law in Marseille, the Société Française de Bionformatique (SFBI).

These steps are not very restrictive. You have to draw up a set of articles of association, and I took my inspiration from those of the SFC. You have to put forward an executive committee of three members on a board of nine, so as to cover more or less all the towns where there were large teams. You also have to file the articles of association with the prefecture and give an address, which is mine. The first board was made up of: Vice-Presidents Jean Lobry and Claudes Thermes, Treasurer Joël Pothier, Webmaster Laurent Mouchard, Secretaries Nicolas Galtier and Jacques Nicolas, Editors Hidde de Jong and Yves Quentin. I had no choice but to appoint myself President. And so SFBI was created on 1 June 2005.

The most important person to find was a webmaster, and fortunately Laurent Mouchard, who was already in charge of the bioinfo list, was willing to create a first site, because I was (and still am) incapable of doing so. In my mind, this site should make a certain number of sections accessible to everyone, members or not:

The members of the board would have written them and the webmaster would have put them online. At the first renewal of the Board, after a year in office, I handed over to Guy Perrière, who handed over to Sophie Schbath in 2010. It was she who took things in hand in earnest, starting with the IT site, and who added the important section of sorted job offers. After six years of sustained activism - her brand image - she has handed over to Morgane Thomas-Chollier, to whom I wish a long presidency.

And what about JOBIM? Since Montpellier in 2010, ten or so university towns have set up a sort of round table, from which Montreal has emerged and perhaps a Swiss town will follow, to take on the increasingly onerous task of organizing the symposium, which brings together four to five hundred people. As there was no candidate in 2007, Bernard Jacques and I chose Marseille. Eleven years later, Christine Brun, formerly co-chair of the program committee, has taken over, and I hope that she will be successful and that the round will continue.

Author: Alain Guénoche (January 2018)

20 years of JOBIM

With the close support of Morgane Thomas-Chollier, president, Hélène Chiapello, vice-president and Julien Fumey, member of the board, Vincent Lefort and I managed to organize the 21st edition of JOBIM in Montpellier under the shadow of an unprecedented health crisis (COVID-19). We agreed with the organizing committee that this year's event would be held remotely. With more than 700 registrations, the community showed its dynamism and the importance of JOBIM for our community.

To mark the 20th anniversary of JOBIM, we were honoured to welcome as guests Marie-France Sagot and Olivier Gascuel, the initiators of JOBIM, for an opening speech. SFBI invites you to rediscover these speeches and some memories of JOBIM's 20th anniversary on this dedicated page.

Keen to play my part in this dynamic process, I put myself forward to join the SFBI board in 2020. After Morgane Thomas-Chollier and Julien Fumey, also a former president of the ‘Jeunes Bioinformaticien de France’, I am honored to have taken on the onerous role of SFBI president from 2021. Following in the footsteps of previous presidents, I hope to be able to maintain our community's kindness towards young bioinformaticians while opening up to more communication and links with other learned societies. To this end, I would like to thank in advance the members of the Board, the volunteers who have been working behind the scenes for the SFBI for several years and, since autumn 2021, our College of Experts, made up of former members of the SFBI Board, whose role is to advise the Board on the most sensitive issues affecting the future and development of the SFBI.

Author: Anna-Sophie Fiston-Lavier (December 2021)

 

Previous board members

 

2005

Creation of the SFBI - Alain Guénoche (President), IML, U. de Marseille-Luminy (2005-2008)

 

​​2006

 

2007 

 

2008

 

2009

 

2010

 

2011

 

2012

 

2013

The web server managed by Valentin Guignon

 

2014 

The web server managed by Valentin Guignon

 

2015 

The web server managed by Valentin Guignon

 

2016 

The web server managed by Valentin Guignon

 

2017

The web server jointly managed by Valentin Guignon and Yannick Boursin

 

2018

The web server jointly managed by Valentin Guignon and Yannick Boursin

 

2019 

The web server jointly managed by Valentin Guignon and Yannick Boursin

 

2020

The web server managed by Julien Fumey

 

2021

The web server managed by Julien Fumey

 

2022

The web server managed by Julien Fumey

 

2023

The web server managed by Julien Fumey

 

2024

The web server managed by Julien Fumey

 

2025

The web server managed by Julien Fumey