Owen R. White, PhD, is the Director of the Bioinformatics department at the Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) and a Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland. The IGS Bioinformatics group annotates (or interprets and analyses) the huge strings of sequencing data from genomic and biomedical researchers at the center. Dr. White and the IGS Bioinformatics department are involved in large-scale annotation, ontology development and data sharing. They are the lead institution for the Human Microbiome Project’s central data repository or the Data Analysis and Coordination Center (known as the HMP DACC).He received Benjamin Franklin Award in 2015.