The Director of the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), Eddy Rubin, has announced that Victor Markowitz will serve as the new Chief Informatics Officer and Associate Director at JGI effective May 17, 2010.

In this new role, Markowitz will provide vision and strategic leadership to establish and maintain leading edge information technology and informatics capabilities for the JGI and DOE partners. He will serve as a member of the JGI senior management team and play a key role in advising the facility’s director on the appropriate direction and formulation of the JGI’s technology infrastructure. He will develop, direct, and evaluate technology strategies including designing and recommending appropriate technological solutions to support the Institute as well as provide a vision and direction for information technology and its linkage to external activities and the scientific community. As CIO, Markowitz will report to the JGI Director.

In addition to his new roles, Markowitz will continue to head the Computational Research Division’s Biological Data Management and Technology Center (BDMTC), which has been engaged in partnership with JGI scientists in the development of microbial genome and metagenome data management and analysis systems. Prior to setting up BDMTC in 2004, Victor served as Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President, Data Management Systems, at Gene Logic Inc. Before joining Gene Logic, Victor spent 10 years at Berkeley Lab, where he led the development of the Object Protocol Model (OPM) data management and integration tools which were used for developing public and commercial genome databases.Victor received his M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees in computer science from Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology.