The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Other Lectures and Symposia

Speaker(s)

Gene Meyers, Ph.D., director emeritus, Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics

Speaker bio(s)

Gene Myers is a computer scientist and biotechnologist best known for the BLAST search engine and his contributions to the assembly of the human genome while at Celera Genomics. In the 80’s Myers invented algorithms for sequence comparison and search culminating with the BLAST algorithm. In the 90’s Myers created and perfected the string graph approach to DNA sequencing, proposed the paired-end whole genome shotgun sequencing of the human genome with Jim Weber, and then designed and built an assembler to do so at Celera Genomics, producing reconstructions of the fly, human, mouse, and mosquito genomes in a 3 year time frame, 1998-2001. Thereafter he focused on building single cell expression atlases across developmental epochs, constructing automated light microscopes and image analysis algorithms custom designed to the task. Finally, with the advent of long read sequencers circa 2010, he returned to genomics with the aim of near perfect reconstructions of large clades of life, such as all the species of bats, in order to investigate questions in genome evolution. Myers has been a professor at the University of Arizona and UC Berkeley, a vice president at Celera Genomics, a group leader with HHMI, and a director of the Max-Planck Society. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, USA, and Leopoldina, the German National Academy. He has won numerous awards including the ACM Kanellakis Theory and Practice Prize, the Milner Award of the Royal Society, the IEEE Fran Allen Medal, and the Order of Merit of the Free State of Saxony, Germany.

Open to

Public

Host

Giulio Formenti

Reception

Refreshments, 1:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m., Lower Level Greenberg Building (CRC)

Phone

(123) 456-7890

Sponsor

Matt Paul
(123) 456-7890
mpaul@rockfeller.edu