Report on the C3BI inauguration ceremony

On January 30, an official ceremony was held for the inauguration of the Center of Bioinformatics, Biostatistics and Integrative Biology (C3BI), an Institut Pasteur-CNRS joint service and research unit since January 2016.

The many people who attended the event enjoyed a presentation of the C3BI by Director Olivier Gascuel, a report on future prospects for life sciences by Catherine Jessus, Director of the Institute of Biological Sciences (CNRS), and an introduction to several flagship projects led by the C3BI.

These presentations were followed by official addresses by Institut Pasteur President Christian Bréchot and CNRS President Alain Fuchs, both of whom emphasized the C3BI's ambition to become a leading center at national and international level in the areas of bioinformatics, biostatistics, integrative biology and their applications in biology and health. At a time of revolutionary transformations in the field of biology as a result of new technological developments, with vast reams of data now being produced, the C3BI perfectly reflects these deep-rooted changes linked to a new approach based on bioinformatics and biostatistics. Christian Bréchot even asserted that computational biology (also referred to as digital biology) is no longer merely "a technology but a way of doing science".

Finally, this event provided an opportunity for a small group of guests to visit the site of the new OMICS Center, accompanied by architects from the firm leading the project. This new center will house cutting-edge research activities dedicated to bioinfomatics, genomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and every omics approaches in general. The future OMICS Center will also incorporate new teams specializing in the field of integrative and quantitative biology, as well as hosting all the platforms linked with these research projects.