The annual prize of the Institut de France is awarded to French nationals aged 45 or under, on the recommendation of the Académie des Sciences, to encourage the development of science in its most diverse forms.
Rayan Chikhi heads the “Algorithms for biological sequences” team at the Institut Pasteur. He is interested in computer science applied to DNA sequencing data. He recently contributed to the discovery of new species of RNA viruses, including previously unrecorded coronaviruses. He is coordinating a number of national and European research projects to develop new algorithms, particularly for analysing huge databases containing all of the Earth’s genetic diversity.
The video of the awards ceremony, which took place under the dome of the Institut de France on 17 October, is available here. Congratulations!