Janet Thornton

Biography

Professor Dame Janet Thornton was Director of EMBL-EBI from October 2001 to June 2015, and played a key role in ELIXIR, the pan-European infrastructure for biological data, since its inception. Her research group focuses on understanding protein structure, function and evolution using computational approaches. After a physics degree she completed her PhD at the UK NIMR before post doctoral studies at Oxford. She then held a joint appointment at University College London and the Bernal Chair in the Crystallography Department at Birkbeck College. Professor Thornton is a Fellow of the Royal Society, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a member of EMBO and a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Research Interest

BioMedBridges is a joint effort of ten biomedical sciences research infrastructures on the ESFRI roadmap. Together, the project partners will develop the shared e-infrastructure—the technical bridges—to allow interoperability between data and services in the biological, medical, translational and clinical domains and thus strengthen biomedical resources in Europe. Launched in January 2012, BioMedBridges is a four-year initiative funded with €10.6 million by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme. Professor Dame Janet Thornton coordinates the BioMedBridges project at EMBL-EBI, on behalf of ELIXIR. Full time BioMedBridges staff, workpackage leaders and other contributors to the project are listed here. To learn more about BioMedBridges, visit the website or contact Stephanie Suhr, BioMedBridges Project Manager.