[BiO BB] Bioinformatics.Org announces the laureate of the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award

[J.W. Bizzaro]

Bioinformatics.Org is proud to present the 2006 Benjamin Franklin Award in the 
Life Sciences to Michael Ashburner of Cambridge University.  As expressed by 
his nominators, Prof. Ashburner has made fundamental contributions to many open 
access bioinformatics projects including FlyBase [1], the GASP project [2], the 
Gene Ontology project [3], and the Open Biological Ontologies project [4], and 
he was instrumental in the establishment of the European Bioinformatics 
Institute [5]. He is also known for advocating open access to biological 
information [6].

The Benjamin Franklin Award in the Life Sciences is a humanitarian award 
presented annually by Bioinformatics.Org to an individual who has, in his or 
her practice, promoted free and open access to the materials and methods used 
in the life sciences.  The Award is named for Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), 
one of the most remarkable men of his time.  Scientist, inventor, statesman, 
Franklin freely and openly shared his ideas and refused to patent his 
inventions, and it is the opinion of the founders of Bioinformatics.Org that he 
embodied the best traits of a scientist.

At the end of 2005, requests for nominations for the 2006 Award were sent out 
to more than 17,000 members of Bioinformatics.Org.  Any individual who received 
more than one nomination was considered a nominee and had their name placed on 
the ballot for final selection by the membership.

The ceremony for the presentation of the Award will be held at the 2006 
Bioinformatics.Org Annual Meeting (BiOAM), held in conjunction with the Life 
Sciences Conference and Expo, Boston, Massachusetts, April 3 to 5, 2006.  The 
presentation will be made April 5 at 10:00 AM, and it is open to all attendees. 
  It involves a short introduction, the presentation of the certificate, and 
the laureate seminar.  Please see http://bio-itworldexpo.com/ for more 
information on the event.

Past laureates of the Benjamin Franklin Award in the Life Sciences include Ewan 
Birney (2005), Lincoln Stein (2004), James Kent (2003) and Michael Eisen 
(2002).  More information on the Award can be found at 
http://bioinformatics.org/franklin/.

References:
1. http://www.flybase.org/
2. http://www.fruitfly.org/GASP1/
3. http://www.geneontology.org/
4. http://obo.sourceforge.net/
5. http://www.ebi.ac.uk/
6. http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2061