G. Christian Overton

Overton received his Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and Physics from the University of New Mexico in 1971,^[5] and his PhD in biophysics in 1979 from Johns Hopkins University. His thesis was on histone genes in the purple sea urchin Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.^[6]

In the 1980s, Overton was part of the artificial intelligence research group at the Unisys Center for Advanced Information Technology in Pennsylvania.^[7]

He joined the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 as a research associate professor of genetics in the School of Medicine. In 1997, he became associate professor and director of the Center for Bioinformatics.^[1] His research interests included genome annotation, gene prediction and recognition of regulatory elements.^[3]

From 1997 to 2000, Overton was a member of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Board of Directors.^[8][9]

Overton died in 2000 from complications arising from cardiomyopathy.^[1] Subsequently, the ISCB set up the Overton Prize in his honor; the prize is awarded annually to a scientist in the early to mid-career stage who has already made a significant contribution to the field of computational biology.^[9] The first recipient was Christopher Burge.