A recurring theme of Paul Gilna's career has been to serve the scientific community while working at the cutting edge of computational biology. His work to set up computational tools and annotated genetic-sequence databases, such as GenBank, has aided the research of countless scientists. (See CV)

After earning a degree in pharmacology at University College Dublin, Gilna pursued a PhD focused on the drugs affecting the hormones oestrogen and progesterone. Advised by mentors to enter the new world of molecular biology, he serendipitously met molecular biologist Pierre Chambon. Gilna's collaboration with Chambon's group and colleagues at the University of Chicago in Illinois culminated in the cloning and sequencing of human oestrogen and progesterone receptors.

While a postdoc at Chicago, Gilna published papers that would become the basis of current genetic testing for the predisposition to breast cancer. At this point, however, he opted out of research to use the computational-biology skills he had taught himself. A position at GenBank, the annotated collection of publicly available gene sequences at Los Alamos National Laboratory, met his goals. “I was looking for something more tangible as evidence that what I doing was of assistance to others,” he says.

Gilna constructed the now familiar requirement that authors of journal articles submit gene sequences to GenBank in exchange for an accession number printed with the article. The procedure made digital data available to researchers and streamlined the process of lifting printed data from journals. He was co-principal investigator until GenBank moved to the National Institutes of Health.

After two years at the National Science Foundation, Gilna returned to Los Alamos to oversee the human-genome sequencing arm of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. One of his best achievements, he says, was aiding its transition to microbial genome sequencing.

His new role is executive director of the CAMERA project, which provides computational and data-analysis tools to decipher the collective genetic codes obtained from as-yet unculturable ocean microbes. The partnership between the J. Craig Venter Institute at the University of California, San Diego, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center will test his ability to lead disparate groups. “The challenge is not only that this is a new partnership, but that it is creating the new field of metagenomics,” he says.