Co-Founders of Bioinformatics Solutions Inc. and professors at the University of Waterloo, Dr. Ming Li and Dr. Bin Ma each won respective awards last night at the 2009 Premier Awards in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Li was presented Premier’s Discovery Award for Innovation Leadership while Dr. Ma won the Premier’s Catalyst Award for Best Young Innovator.

The Ministry of Research and Innovation, a branch of the Government of Ontario, selected Dr. Li and Dr. Ma independently, based on their research applications to the field of bioinformatics and algorithm design in mass spectrometry respectively.

“The Ministry established this world-class innovation awards program to recognize our most creative and successful entrepreneurs.” Craig Fowler, Director (A) Research Branch, Ministry of Research and Innovation.

Dr. Li’s Premier’s Discovery Award for Innovation Leadership is highly attributed to his successful efforts with numerous bioinformatics software, PatternHunter (general purpose homology searching), RAPTOR (protein modeling) and PEAKS (protein identification), as well as his founding of the University of Waterloo’s co-operative undergraduate bioinformatics program, rated among the elite in North America.

The Premier’s Catalyst Award for Best Young Innovator recognizes Dr. Ma’s research towards the proteomic mass spectrometry software, PEAKS. First released in 2002, PEAKS has gained widespread acceptance by pharmaceutical companies, governments and academic institutions worldwide, for its reputable identification of protein sequences with and without the aid of a database. The most recent developments for PEAKS are dedicated to sample quantification (labeled and label free) as well as the continued efforts in sequence reconstruction.

These awards not only recognize the great minds behind cutting edge innovations, such as Dr. Li and Dr. Ma, but further contribute to a rapidly growing interest in BSI’s ongoing research initiatives and bioinformatics development as a whole.