Dr. Isidore Rigoutsos Elected AAAS Fellow for 2020

Isidore Rigoutsos, PhD, a leader in the field of computational biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in the Section of Biological Sciences.

PHILADELPHIA -- Isidore Rigoutsos, PhD, a leader in the field of computational biology, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), in the Section of Biological Sciences. Election as an AAAS Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.

Rigoutsos is the Richard H. Hevner Professor in Computational Medicine and Founding Director of the Computational Medicine Center at Thomas Jefferson University. He is a member of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center – Jefferson Health, and holds appointments in the Departments of Pathology, Anatomy & Cell Biology; Biochemistry & Molecular Biology; and Cancer Biology at Jefferson. Prior to joining Jefferson in 2010, Rigoutsos worked at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center where he cofounded the Computational Biology Center.

This year, 489 members worldwide representing various scientific disciplines have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

Rigoutsos is being recognized for the Teiresias algorithm, a deterministic data agnostic method for discovering patterns in data streams, and the Berger-Rigoutsos algorithm, a technique for handling dynamic regridding when solving partial differential equations with adaptive mesh refinement.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected by my peers as a fellow of the AAAS,” Rigoutsos said. “I would like to thank my mentors, collaborators, and students whose hard work helped make this recognition possible.”

Rigoutsos’ work combines experimental and computational techniques to solve problems from genomics, genetics, molecular biology, and medicine. His laboratory studies three types of short RNAs – the microRNA isoforms, the transfer RNA-derived fragments, and the ribosomal RNA-derived fragments. Their work focuses on understanding the regulatory roles these molecules play in health and disease, and how these roles are influenced by patient attributes including sex, genetic ancestry, and age.

“Dr. Rigoutsos has been a pioneer in the computational biology field for some time now,” says Dr. Mark Tykocinski, provost of Thomas Jefferson University and dean of its Sidney Kimmel Medical College. “More than simply contributing to this dynamic 21^st century field, he continues to chart entirely new sub-fields within that conceptual domain. In the process, his big data analytics, validated at the bench, are challenging core assumptions surrounding genomics and biomolecular complexity, as well as charting new paths at the clinical diagnostics and therapeutics frontier.”

Founded in 1848, AAAS is the world’s largest general scientific society and the publisher of the journal Science, among others. AAAS includes more than 250 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. The nonprofit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy, international programs, science education, public engagement, and more. The tradition of naming fellows began in 1874.

The fellows will be formally announced in the Nov. 27 issue of Science, and a virtual induction ceremony will be held on Feb. 13, 2021. For more information, visit the AAAS website.

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