Martin Hofmann-Apitius studied Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Tuebingen (Germany). He holds a PhD in Molecular Biology, and for more than 10 years he worked in experimental molecular biology with a strong focus on genes and proteins that are responsible for the metastatic behavior of tumour cells. The screening for novel genes involved in tumour metastasis led him into the area of functional genomics and subsequently to applied bioinformatics. Martin Hofmann-Apitius has experience in both, academic (Research Centre Karlsruhe; German Cancer Research Centre) and industrial research (BASF, Boehringer Ingelheim and LION bioscience). Since 2002 he has been leading the Department of Bioinformatics at the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing (SCAI) in Sankt Augustin (Germany), a governmental non-profit research institute. In July 2006 he has been appointed as a Professor for Applied Life Science Informatics at Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology (B-IT). Current research in Martin Hofmann-Apitiusī group at Fraunhofer SCAI focuses on three different areas, namely

• information extraction in the life sciences
• in silico target validation and virtual screening
• distributed and high performance computing