About the award: The Award is named in honor of Dr. Fred Howes who, as the Program Director of the US Department of Energy, MICS Applied Mathematics Program in 1979 provided tremendous support towards the founding of the International Annual RECOMB Conference Series. In addition to RECOMB, his visionary reach extended to a variety of other DOE-funded enterprises in support of computational biology. The DOE Applied Mathematics Program was founded at DOE by John von Neumann. Dr. Howes led this program for over 14 years until his untimely death in 1999. It was the strongest applied mathematics program in the United States and included support for research groups in many DOE National Laboratories, as well as a large number of universities. We honor with this award a visionary mathematician of unusual modesty who distinguished himself through the exceptional service that he provided for the applied mathematics community in general and computational biology in particular. For many of us, especially the young researchers, he was a friend, a mentor, and a force for good.