Last updated: January 14, 2016
NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program Awards Telebriefing Participant Bios
NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program Awards Telebriefing Participant Bios
NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program Awards Telebriefing, January 14, 2016
Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D., is the director of NHGRI, a position he has held since late 2009. NHGRI, part of NIH, is the largest organization in the world solely dedicated to genomics research. Previously, he served as the NHGRI scientific director (2002-2009), chief of the NHGRI Genome Technology Branch (1996-2009), and director of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center (1997-2009). While directing an independent research program for almost two decades, Dr. Green was at the forefront of efforts to map, sequence, and understand eukaryotic genomes, including significant, start-to-finish involvement in the Human Genome Project. Now, as director of NHGRI, Dr. Green is responsible for providing overall leadership of the Institute's research portfolio and other initiatives. This requires significant coordination with other NIH components and funding agencies. Most recently, Dr. Green led NHGRI to the completion of a strategic planning process that yielded a new vision for the future of genomics research, entitled Charting a course for genomic medicine from base pairs to bedside (Nature, 470:204-213. 2011.)
Adam Felsenfeld, Ph.D., is a program director with overall responsibility for the NHGRI Genome Sequencing Program (GSP), and specific responsibility for the NHGRI Large Scale Genome Sequencing and Analysis Centers (LSAC) component of the program. Dr. Felsenfeld is involved with all aspects of the program, including monitoring and assessing progress, selecting and coordinating new sequencing projects, policy related to data deposition and release of human sequence data, and strategic planning. Dr. Felsenfeld is also involved with NHGRI programs in functional genomics and proteomics, and is a co-lead on the NIH Common Fund Protein Capture Initiative. He has broad interests in the genomics of inherited disease, comparative genomics, genome structure and evolution, proteomics, developmental genetics, and systems biology.
Jeffery Schloss, Ph.D., is a program director for the NHGRI's Division of Genome Sciences. As program director for technology development coordination, Dr. Schloss serves as a resource on technology development for the Extramural Research Program and manages a portfolio of grants across a range of nucleic acids-related technologies - in particular the $1,000 genome sequencing technology development program. Dr. Schloss joined NHGRI in 1992 as a program director for centers that were building genetic and physical maps of human and model organism genomes, and then helped NHGRI initiate its large scale sequencing pilot projects. He then transitioned to the technology development program where he has run programs to accelerate the availability of genomics technologies, and coordinated interdisciplinary programs in bioengineering and nanotechnology research across the NIH and U.S. federal science agencies.
Lu Wang, Ph.D., is a program director for NHGRI's Genome Sequencing Program (GSP). Her main responsibility is to adminster the GSP in the areas of Mendelian disorders, pathogens and vectors of infectious diseases, comparative genome evolution, and medical sequencing. Prior to joining the NHGRI in 2006, she led the development and commercialization of a number of FDA 510(k)-cleared molecular products serving tissue/organ transplant diagnostics and immunogenetics research in general. Dr. Wang serves on a number of NIH and external committees that coordinate or oversee rare disease gene discovery, organism-specific databases, or access to publically available genomic and phenotypic data. She is the author or coauthor of a number of research and review articles on transcriptional regulation, as well as on molecular diagnostic assay development.
Carolyn Hutter, Ph.D., is a program director in NHGRI's Extramural Research Program. She is the NHGRI team lead for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and a program director on the Clinical Sequencing Exploratory Research (CSER) project. Dr. Hutter joined the NIH in 2012, serving as a program director in the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Epidemiology and Genomics Research Program before transferring to NHGRI in 2013. Prior to NIH, she was a senior staff scientist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Lecturer at the University of Washington, where her research focused on large-scale consortia work for genome-wide association studies and on gene-environment interactions for cancer and other complex diseases.
John Ohab, Ph.D. is the chief of the Communications and Public Liaison Branch at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). Dr. Ohab leads the institute's communications, public liaison and media relations activities, working closely with NHGRI senior leadership to communicate genomic research advances and how they apply to the scientific community and the general public. He also works with leadership to formulate policy for communications issues and strategies. Before joining NHGRI, Dr. Ohab was the head of the Communications and Social Media Section at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), the in-house research and development nexus for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, where he provided strategic communications guidance to senior leadership and was responsible for integrating emerging technologies into public and internal communications activities. Prior to that, he served as a new technology analyst at the Department of Defense (DOD), where he provided research and evaluation of Web technology initiatives for the DOD Public Web program.
Posted: January 14, 2016