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Prestigious Eureka nomination for WEHI bioinformatician 

31 July 2024
Gordon Smyth

WEHI’s Bioinformatics division head, Professor Gordon Smyth, has been announced as a finalist for the Eureka Prize for Excellence in Research Software.

The nomination honours his lead role in developing and designing the limma software package, which helps researchers detect changes in gene activity. The software has been used to make scientific discoveries in more than 70,000 published papers worldwide.

The Australian Museum Eureka Prizes are among Australia’s most distinguished science awards, honouring excellence across the areas of research and innovation, leadership, science engagement, and school science.

At a glance
Professor Gordon Smyth has been nominated as a finalist in the 2024 Eureka Prize for Excellence in Research Software.
The nomination recognises his lead role in developing the limma software package, a leading tool used by researchers across a range of fields to detect changes in gene activity.
Understanding how genes behave is key to finding new treatments for diseases including cancer and diabetes.

A critical tool

Understanding how genes are turned on or off, a process called gene expression, is an essential part of disease research.

By comparing, for example, how genes are expressed in healthy and diseased samples, scientists can identify genes that cause diseases like cancer, diabetes and neurological disorders, opening the door to new treatments and therapies.

Bioinformatics applies mathematics, statistics and computer science to make sense of complex biological data and biological systems. limma is the leading software package used in bioinformatics for analysing gene expression, and the world’s most downloaded software of its type.

Prof Smyth said modern genomic technologies produced a vast amount of data for researchers to examine.

“My team here at WEHI have for many years been developing the advanced computational and statistical strategies to help analyse and interpret these huge datasets, headlined by limma,” he said.

“Our goal is ultimately to learn more about how diseases originate by examining genetic disruption and how this can be controlled – while freely providing the tools we develop to others around the world so they can do the same.”

Collaborative team effort

Professor Smyth joined WEHI in 2001, the year the sequencing of the human genome was published, and started work on limma soon after.

“This has been an incredible team effort from many members of my lab, and I would particularly like to mention my WEHI colleagues Professor Matt Ritchie, Dr Belinda Phipson and Dr Charity Law, who made significant contributions to important limma functionalities early on.

“Software development is fundamental for modern research but has not always been fully recognised or rewarded – it is fantastic that the Australian Museum and the Australian Research Data Commons have created this prize to highlight its critical importance in driving discovery and innovation.”

The Eureka Prize winners will be announced at a ceremony in Sydney on Wednesday 4 September.

Header image: Professor Gordon Smyth

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