Cold Spring Harbor Symposium Live: Conversations Genomes 2008

George Weinstock, Ph.D. joined The Genome Center at Washington University in 2008 where he is Associate Director and Professor of Genetics. Previously, he was involved in building one of three NIH-funded large-scale Genome Centers (Baylor College of Medicine Human Genome Sequencing Center, HGSC) and subsequent sequencing of the Human Genome. He was a leader in other HGSC genome projects: the rat, mouse, cow, macaque, marmoset, orangutan, dolphin, wallaby, sea urchin, honey bee, beetle, wasp,...

Hillary Sussman received a PhD in Human Genetic Toxicology from the University at Albany in 2002. Until 2004, she worked as a freelance science writer on Long Island in New York, writing for magazines such as The Scientist and Drug Discovery Today. Since then, Dr. Sussman has been Executive Editor of Genome Research, a journal that publishes advances in genome biology and genomic medicine. As a primary research journal, Genome Research ranks fourth among all genetics publications and is among...

Dr. Dietrich Stephan is a human geneticist who works to understand the root causes of common human diseases so that early diagnostics and interventions can be implemented. Dr. Stephan most recently was the deputy director of discovery research at the Translational Genomics Research Institute and still holds a faculty appointment there. Dr. Stephan has identified genes that predispose to disorders such as autism, exercise-induced heart attacks and sudden infant death syndrome, and contributed...

Kári Stefánsson, M.D., Dr. Med. has served as President, Chief Executive Officer and a Director since he co-founded deCODE genetics in August 1996. Dr. Stefánsson was appointed the Chairman of the Board of Directors of deCODE genetics in December 1999. From 1993 until April 1997, Dr. Stefánsson was a professor of Neurology, Neuropathology and Neuroscience at Harvard University. In addition, from 1993 through December 1996 he was Director of Neuropathology at Beth Israel Hospital in...

Professor David Schwartz, a Bronx native, has been working in the field of genomic analysis since 1975, when he was an undergraduate at Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts. During his senior year, he worked in a Harvard University laboratory using viscoelastic measurements to determine the sizes of a series of eukaryotic genomes. There, he conceived a radical approach for the electrophoretic separation of very large DNA molecules, which at the time was poorly received. After starting...

Richard M. Myers is currently the Chairman and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor at the Department of Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. Since 2005, he has served on the Scientific Advisory Board of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, an emerging non-profit research institute with close partnerships with biotechnology companies in Huntsville Alabama. He was offered and accepted the position of Director of HudsonAlpha, and has been actively involved in building the...

Joseph D. McInerney received his MS in human genetics and genetic counseling from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, in 1976. He then spent more than two decades at the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS), in Colorado, where he was director for 14 years and wrote textbooks and other educational materials in biology, with a focus on genetics and evolution. Since October 2000, McInerney has been director of NCHPEG – the National Coalition for Health Professional...

Elaine R. Mardis is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Molecular Microbiology, and Co-Director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO. She holds a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Chemistry (1989) and a B.S. in Zoology (1984) from the University of Oklahoma. Dr. Mardis has been at the Washington University School of Medicine’s Genome Sequencing Center (GSC) since 1993, playing a pivotal role in the evaluation, optimization and application...

Dr. Michael Levine is is Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development at the University of California, Berkeley. His labortaory studies gene networks that control animal development and disease. Particular efforts focus on the control of segmentation and gastrulation in the early Drosophila embryo, the immune response in Drosophila larvae, and the differentiation of the notochord and heart in the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis.

Dr. Thomas J. Hudson is President and Scientific Director of the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research (OICR). He is recruiting more than 50 internationally recognized principal investigators to implement OICR’s Strategic Plan, which focuses on prevention, early diagnosis, cancer targets and new therapeutics. Dr. Hudson was the founder and Director of the McGill University and Genome Quebec Innovation Centre and Assistant-Director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research....