Ewan Birney (chair) is Deputy Director General of EMBL, Director of EMBL-EBI with Dr Rolf Apweiler, and runs a small research group. Ewan led the analysis of the Human Genome gene set, mouse and chicken genomes and the ENCODE project, focusing on non-coding elements of the human genome. Ewan’s main areas of research include functional genomics, DNA algorithms, statistical methods to analyse genomic information and use of images for chromatin structure. He is a non-executive Director of Genomics England. He was elected an EMBO member in 2012, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2015. Ewan completed his PhD at the Wellcome Sanger Institute with Richard Durbin. In 2000, he became Head of Nucleotide data at EMBL-EBI and in 2012 he took on the role of Associate Director at the institute. He became Director of EMBL-EBI in 2015.