Thomas Lengauer is named ACM Fellow
Thomas Lengauer is Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the largest educational and scientific computing society.
Thomas Lengauer, has been named an ACM Fellow 2021 of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). With this title, the world's largest scientific society for computer science honors members who have made outstanding contributions to the field of computer science and information technology or have rendered outstanding service to ACM and its community.
During his scientific career, Thomas Lengauer first worked on issues in theoretical computer science, then on problems in the design of integrated circuits. Finally, he turned to bioinformatics in the 1990s. Here, Lengauer and his research group developed methods for protein structure prediction and drug design, resistance analyses in viral infections such as HIV, and the analysis of epigenomic data. These activities led, among other things, to the successful spin-off BioSolveIT GmbH, in Sankt Augustin, Germany, which develops software for drug design and licenses it in the pharmaceutical sector.
Furthermore, in collaboration with Rolf Kaiser's group at the Institute of Virology, the software system geno2pheno was developed, which supports individual therapy selection for HIV patients and is used in the clinical field. This system introduced machine learning technology to the analysis of therapy success in infectious diseases. Today, HIV patients in Germany and worldwide benefit from the software. For these activities, Lengauer, together with his cooperation partners Rolf Kaiser and Mark Oette (University Hospital Essen), received the Heinz Ansmann Award for AIDS Research in 2010.
Thomas Lengauer has been a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina since 2003 and a member of its Presidium since 2015. He is also a member of acatech – National Academy of Science and Engineering and of Academia Europaea. He received the Hector Science Prize in 2015 as well as the Karl Heinz Beckurts Prize (2003) and the Konrad Zuse Medal, the highest award of the German Informatics Society (2003).
Since April 2019, Lengauer has been leading the bioinformatics activities in the Laboratory for Viral Resistance Research at the Institute of Virology at the University of Cologne. These include the further development of the geno2pheno system and research into the role of viruses and their evolution in infectious diseases such as COVID-19, hepatitis B and hepatitis C, as well as in cancer.
Lengauer receives the ACM Fellow designation for his contributions to bioinformatics and medical informatics.