Dr Sebastian Maurer-Stroh studied theoretical biochemistry at the University of Vienna and wrote his master’s and Doctor of Philosophy thesis at the Institute of Molecular Pathology. After Federation of European Biochemical Societies and Marie Curie fellowships at the Vlaams Institut voor Biotechnologie -Switch laboratory in Brussels, he has been leading a group of experts in protein sequence analysis as a senior principal investigator in the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute (BII) since 2007. He was appointed Executive Director of BII in January 2021.

Being able to quickly move from genomes to protein structures through computational analysis and modelling, his team is critically contributing to national and global viral pathogen surveillance - notably with FluSurver used by National Influenza Centres as part of the global WHO surveillance network through GISAID and at the national front line, supporting the National Public Health Laboratory at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, especially during recent major virus outbreaks including H1N1, MERS, Ebola, H5N1, Dengue, Zika, SARS-CoV-2 (hCoV-19) and many more. He has been working closely with GISAID on enabling sharing and real-time analysis of the pandemic coronavirus causing COVID-19. Dr Maurer-Stroh’s protein function analysis skills have also supported the National Precision Medicine programme through the development of SNPdrug3D.