David Haussler
Title of Talk
Molecular evolution and cancer genomics
Biography
Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Professor, Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Scientific Co-Director, California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3)
Director, Center for Biomolecular Science & Engineering
David Haussler’s research lies at the interface of mathematics, computer science, and molecular biology. He develops new statistical and algorithmic methods to
explore the molecular evolution of the human genome, integrating cross-species comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function,
and regulation. His recent research sheds light on the possible functionality of what was once considered to be “junk” DNA, and his lab has identified and explored
the function of genomic elements that have remained conserved for millions of years and then undergone rapid evolution in newer species. He has also begun to
computationally reconstruct the genome of the ancestor common to placental mammals.
As a collaborator on the international Human Genome Project, his team posted the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence
on the internet—the precursor to the UCSC Genome Browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu), a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research.
Haussler received his PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International
Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), the 2006 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award.
Web site: http://www.cbse.ucsc.edu/staff/haussler.shtml
Laboratory:
http://www.cbse.ucsc.edu/staff/hausslerlab.shtml