David Sankoff

Education Sankoff published his first paper in 1963 while he was an undergraduate student in Mathematics at McGill University. Starting with his doctoral research, he developed mathematical formulations to a number of pivotal concepts in socio- and historical linguistics, including glottochronology, variable rules analysis (with Henrietta Cedergren), the linguistic marketplace and code switching.

Career and research After completing his Ph.D. in Mathematics, Sankoff began his academic career at the University of Montreal in 1969. In 1971, Sankoff became interested in molecular sequence comparison In 1973, Sankoff and Robert Cedergren developed a joint estimation method for phylogeny and multiple sequence alignment of 5S ribosomal RNA, laying the algorithmic foundations of comparative genomics. In 1975, Sankoff and Václav Chvátal studied the behavior of the longest common subsequence problem on random inputs; the constants of proportionality arising in this study have come to be known as the Chvátal–Sankoff constants. In 1980, Robert Cedergen and David Sankoff created the first research group in bioinformatics at the University of Montreal. Sankoff's work in bioinformatics addresses RNA secondary structure, genome rearrangements, sequence alignment, genome evolution and phylogenetics.

Awards and honors Inaugural recipient of the International Society for Computational Biology's Senior Scientist Award in 2003. Elected an ISCB Fellow by the International Society for Computational Biology in 2009 Marcel-Vincent Prize (1977) Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award (2002) University of Ottawa Excellence in Research Award (2013) Honorary doctorate, Tel Aviv University (2014)