Prof. M. Vijayan, a physicist by training, obtained his PhD in X-ray crystallography from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1967. After his post-doctoral research at Oxford, UK he has been associated with the Indian Institute of Science in various capacities including as Associate Director of the institute. With nearly 200 scientific publications to his credit, Prof. Vijayan has received several prestigious honours and awards, such as the Bhatnagar Prize for Biological Sciences in 1985, the G. N. Ramachandran 60th birthday commemoration medal from the Indian National Science Academy in 1994, the Ranbaxy Research award in Basic Medical Sciences in 1996 and the K.S. Krishnan Memorial Lecture Award of the Indian National Science Academy in 2001. Prof. Vijayan is a member of several prominent international and national organisations such as the IUPAB task force on Bioinformatics, Inter-Union Bioinformatics Group, Asia-Pacific International Molecular Biology Network etc.