Hugues Roest Crollius is a Senior Research Director at CNRS. After a PhD at the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in 1997, he led a genome project at Genoscope, the French sequencing centre, then joined the CNRS in 2021. He leads a comparative genomics group at IBENS in Paris, where he also oversees a large CPU/GPU computing cluster. His research focuses on understanding how genomes evolve and how their structure underpins biological innovation. He also leads ATLASea, a national programme dedicated to sequencing marine eukaryotic biodiversity in French ocean territories. He is scientific delegate for bioinformatics at CNRS Biologie, and is a member of the Board of ELIXIR.