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Osnat Penn is an Israeli computational biologist. Penn is the third Israeli scientist in three years to win the UNESCO-L’Oréal fellowship, which she received in 2013 for her work on the genetic origins of autism. Penn is currently at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Penn has been responsible for several different computer programs developed at Tel Aviv University in order to aid in biological research. GUIDANCE is a web server used for estimating alignment confidence scores. RASER, the RAte Shift EstimatoR, is used to test site-specific evolutionary rate shifts. The Pepitope Server is used to map epitopes using affinity-selected peptides. Her work with autism genetic sequencing which won her the UNESCO-L’Oréal award, worked to identify where there were genetic variations that linked to individuals displaying autism. Her work will also lead to prenatal screening and early diagnosis of autism.
Penn has been published in Cell, Genome Research, Molecular Biology and Evolution, Nucleic Acids Research, Systematic Biology, BMC Evolutionary Biology, PLoS Computational Biology, Bioinformatics, and Proteins.