Chris Overton, the founding director of the Center for Bioinformatics at the University of Pennsylvania, passed away on May 31 from complications arising from cardiomyopathy. Overton, who was widely considered a pioneer in bioinformatics research, was also an associate professor in Penn’s Department of Genetics, and held a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer and Information Science in Penn’s School of Engineering and Applied Science. His research interests focused on problems associated with database integration, genome annotation, gene prediction, and recognition of regulatory elements among nucleotides in the human genome. Contributions may be made in his memory to the G. Christian Overton Cardiovascular research fund, Medical Center Development, 3535 Market St., Suite 700, Philadelphia, PA 19104. His family welcomes remembrances, which may be emailed to Overton’s brother John at [email protected]