Alia Benkahla (PhD) is a professor at the Pasteur Institute of Tunis since January 2005, where she initiated a research group in bioinformatics and biomathematics, which has since become the Laboratory of Bioinformatics, Biomathematics and Biostatistics (BIMS).
Prof. Benkhala is the Head of BIMS. Her research aims to understand the processes of regulation, interaction, and signalling mechanisms activated in response to diseases and more recently, on clinical informatics. Prof. Benkhala invested fifteen years in capacity-building in the field of Bioinformatics in her country by: training students, co-organizing international events in Africa, and generating funding for Bioinformatics focused on Tunisia’s and Africa’s health issues. She coordinated the writing of the first survey about bioinformatics development in Africa and co-organized the first African Conference of Bioinformatics in 2007. She served as President of the African Society of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (ASBCB) until 2019 and co-chaired the H3Africa Phenotype Harmonization Working Group and was a core member in the H3Africa Data & Biospecimen Access Committee Working Group. She also serves on the American Council on Education- Global Council. Prof. Benkhala co-authored 25 peer- reviewed bioinformatics publications, including two Nature and two Science papers.
Institut Pasteur de Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia
