Jacques S. Beckmann - Biography#

Jacques S. Beckmann was, from the end of 2012 (when he reached the legal retirement age) till the end of 2016, head of clinical bioinformatics, a unit he created ex nihilo, at the SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. He was previously appointed (from October 2002 till Sept 2012) Professor of Human Genetics and Director of the Dept. of Medical Genetics at the Univ. of Lausanne (UNIL) as well as head of the Medical Genetics Service of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV. ltogether there were close to 100 people working in these two units. Previously, he held a chair as Full professor at the Dept. of Molecular Genetics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel (from Aug 2000 till Sept 2002).

Initially trained in molecular genetics, he progressively moved to genetics and eventually to human genetics. After his post-doctoral training he served for ten years (from 1980 till 1990) as Senior Research Scientist (equivalent to Assoc Prof.) at the Dept. of Field and Garden Crops, at the Agricultural Research Organisation, The Volcani Center (Bet-Dagan, Israel). There, together with Prof. Morris Soller from the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), they pioneered in the 1980s the use of marker-assisted genetic improvement in plants and animals, focusing on Quantitative Trait Loci (QTLs) and their implementation in breeding. During this time, he also collaborated regularly with Prof. Edouard Trifonov from the Weizmann Institute. Together they worked on bioinformatic analyses of genome sequences. In 1990, he shifted to human genetics with a move to Paris, where he held successively senior research positions at the Centre d’Etudes du Polymorphisme Humain (CEPH, Human Polymorphism Study Center), and Généthon (Evry), where he ended up acting as its scientific director. Last but not least, in Paris he was also involved, together with Mark Lathrop, in the creation of the Centre National de Génotypage (CNG, Evry), where he served as Deputy-Director. Together with Prof. Soller, they laid the theoretical framework for the use of the emerging molecular DNA markers (RFLPs at that time) in plant and animal breeding.