Cédric Notredame
Professor of Computational Biology
Research Interests
Professor Notredame’s teaching and research interests span evolutionary biology, comparative genomics, and the development of algorithms for biological sequence analysis. He is best known for the T-Coffee multiple sequence alignment framework, which has been widely adopted in molecular biology and structural bioinformatics. More recently, his laboratory has played a central role in the development of Nextflow, a workflow language routinely used for large-scale, reproducible data analysis in genomics.
Professor Notredame's work lies at the intersection of biology, algorithms, and scientific infrastructure, with a strong emphasis on methodological reproducibility, and community-driven tool development. In teaching, he aims to provide students with solid conceptual foundations, particularly in comparative genomics, and practical skills, enabling them to critically assess computational methods and design robust, scalable analyses in data-intensive biology.
Email
Prior to joining MBZUAI, Professor Notredame was a Senior Principal Investigator at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona, Spain, which he joined in 2007. Earlier in his career, Professor Notredame held research positions as a CNRS researcher in Marseille, France, Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and Principal Investigator at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. He received a Ph.D. fellowship from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in 1993 and conducted his doctoral research at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Hinxton, UK, before earning his Ph.D. in bioinformatics from Université Paul Sabatier in Toulouse in 1997. In addition to his position at MBZUAI, he serves as Chief Editor of NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics.
- Ph.D. in Bioinformatics, Université Paul Sabatier, France
- M.Sc. in Biotechnologies, Université Paul Sabatier, France
Swiss Bioinformatics Institute Resource Innovation award for Nextflow, 2021
- Langer, B.E., Amaral, A., Baudement, M.O., Bonath, F., Charles, M., Chitneedi, P.K., ... Notredame, C.: “Empowering Bioinformatics Communities with Nextflow and nf-core”, Genome Biology, 2025.
- Sasse, A. Ray, D. Laverty, K.U., Tam, C.L. Abu, M. Zheng, H. Lyudovyk, O. Dalal, T. Nie, K. Maggis, C. Notredame, C. Weirauch, T. Hughes, R. T., Morris, Q.: “Reconstructing the sequence specificities of RNA-binding proteins across Eukaryotes”, Nature Biotechnology, 2025.
- Baltzis, A., Santus, L., Langer, B.E., Magis, C., de Vienne, D.M., Gascuel, O., Notredame, C.: “MultiStrap: Boosting Phylogenetic Analyses with Structural Information”, Nature Communications 16(1): 293, 2025.
- Nogales, E., Di Tommaso, P., Magis C., Erb I., Floden E., Notredame C.: “Fast and Accurate Large Multiple Sequence Alignments Using Root-to-Leave Regressive Computation”, Nature Biotechnology 37(12):1446-1470, 2019.
- Di Tommaso, P., ... Notredame C.: “Nextflow Enables Reproducible Computational Workflows”, Nature Biotechnology 35 (4): 316–19, 2017.