Faculty Investigators

Richard M. Myers, Ph.D.

President, Director and Faculty Investigator, HudsonAlpha Institute

Dr. Richard Myers received his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1977, his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley with Robert Tjian and performed postdoctoral work at Harvard University with Tom Maniatis. He began his first faculty position at the University of California at San Francisco in 1986 and moved his laboratory to Stanford University’s Department of Genetics in 1993, where he was professor and chair. Myers relocated his laboratory to HudsonAlpha in July 2008.

Myers’ research program is focused on human genetics and genomics. Work in his laboratory has led to the identification of genes involved in several inherited diseases, and his genome center contributed more than 10 percent of the data in the public Human Genome Project’s efforts to sequence the human genome. Support Dr. Myers' work.

Devin Absher, Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Absher has been involved in human genetics from a variety of perspectives. He earned a B.S. in molecular biology from UC San Diego in 1991, followed by a Ph.D. in biochemistry and molecular biology at Emory University in 2000. There he worked on Fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of mental retardation. As a postdoctoral fellow, he continued his focus on Mendelian diseases by working on Huntington disease with Dr. Richard Myers at Stanford University. Absher then moved to the Stanford Human Genome Center where he began work on complex genetics, including genome-wide association studies of bipolar disorder and cardiovascular disease, as well as population genetics studies involving human populations from around the world. At HudsonAlpha, Absher is working on complex genetic diseases and traits. He incorporates the study of epigenetic influences on disease development by looking at genome-wide methylation patterns in disease populations. He also is continuing his work on population genetics and the emerging field of copy number variation. Support Dr. Absher's work.

Greg Barsh, M.D., Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Greg Barsh received M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Washington and obtained postgraduate training at UC Los Angeles and UC San Francisco. Barsh comes to HudsonAlpha from the Stanford University School of Medicine where he held posts as professor of genetics and pediatrics, and associate chair of the department of genetics. For the last two decades his lab has studied fundamental aspects of cell signaling and natural variation as a means to better understand, diagnose and treat important human diseases including cancer, obesity and diabetes. In the same way that Nobel prize-winning studies of fruitflies and roundworms have led to a deeper understanding of cancer biology and programmed cell death, Barsh’s lab uses mutations that affect a simple phenotype—variation of eye, hair, or skin color in laboratory mice and other mammals—as entry points for more complex processes that are biomedically significant. His research accomplishments based on the application of mouse coat color genetics to basic problems in cell signaling, gene regulation and human disease have been recognized by several awards, including the E Mead Johnson Award from the Society of Pediatric Research, and the Takeuchi and Seiji Awards from the International Society for Pigment Cell Research. He is also a former investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, director of the Stanford Medical Scientist Training Program, and deputy editor of PLoS Genetics. Support Dr. Barsh's work.

Jane Grimwood, Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Grimwood received her B.Sc. and Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Oxford, Dartmouth College and the University of San Francisco. Beginning in 2000, she was a senior scientist at the Stanford Human Genome Center where she and her group were responsible for finishing and performing quality analysis on the 320 million base pairs of human chromosomes 5, 16 and 19, comprising more than 10 percent of the human genome. After the completion of the Human Genome Project, Grimwood continues to lead a group focusing on sequencing, finishing and genome improvement of a wide variety of eukaryotic genomes, including plants, fungi and vertebrates at HudsonAlpha. Support Dr. Grimwood's work.

Chris Gunter, Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Chris Gunter is the HudsonAlpha director of research affairs. Gunter earned her B.S. degree in both genetics and biochemistry from the University of Georgia in 1992, and a Ph.D. in genetics from Emory University in 1998. Her research was centered on human genetics, and specifically on Fragile X syndrome, the most common inherited form of mental retardation. She then completed postdoctoral work at Case Western Reserve University, examining the mechanism of mammalian X-chromosome inactivation.

Gunter went on to editorial positions at several scientific journals, including Human Molecular Genetics and Science. Most recently, she served as the editor for genetics and genomics manuscripts at the international journal Nature, the most highly-cited general science journal in the world. At HudsonAlpha, Gunter coordinates research activities, communicates science to the public in a number of media formats (including the weekly seminar series), and establishes academic partnerships and collaborations. She also has adjunct professorships at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Alabama Huntsville, and University of Alabama at Birmingham. Support Dr. Gunter's work.

Jian Han, M.D., Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Han received his M.D. from Suzhou Medical College in JiangSu Province, China in 1983 and his Ph.D. in clinical molecular genetics from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1991.

He obtained his board certification in 1996 in clinical molecular genetics and served as clinical molecular laboratory director and assistant professor in the UAB Department of Pediatrics. In 1996 he founded Genaco, the first company to introduce Down syndrome prenatal screening and diagnostic service to China. During the SARS outbreak of 2003, Genaco developed technology and products for molecular differential diagnoses of infectious diseases.

Han created a novel multiplex PCR technology, Tem-PCR, that allows multiple molecular targets to be amplified in one reaction. A series of products was developed and commercialized. The technology won Genaco several awards, including the 2006 Frost & Sullivan Technology Innovation and Leadership Award and the 2007 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award. Genaco was acquired by the world’s leading molecular diagnostic company, Qiagen, in 2006.

Biochemical reactions, such as the polymerase chain reaction, are like software in the information technology industry; both require tailor-made hardware to become more functional. Han is developing an integrated technology platform that allows multiplex molecular differential diagnoses carried out in a fashion that is high throughput, semi-quantitative, automatic, and with a closed system. Support Dr. Han's work.

Neil Lamb, Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Neil E. Lamb is the HudsonAlpha director of educational outreach. He received his B.S. degree in molecular biology from Auburn University and his Ph.D. in human genetics from Emory University. In 1999, Lamb became a faculty member of the department of human genetics at Emory. He served as director of education, overseeing genetic educational opportunities with the schools of medicine, nursing and theology, as well as directing outreach efforts for K-12 programs and the public.

At HudsonAlpha, Lamb serves not only as a “cheerleader for genetic education” but also develops and implements a comprehensive outreach program aimed at educating school-age children, educators and the public. He and his team have developed a genetics module for the Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative (AMSTI), providing hands-on experiences with DNA for middle- and high-school students across the entire state. Importantly, his team also trains a number of teachers each year so they can lead their classes through genetics and biotechnology curricula. Neil also developed the wildly popular "Biotech 101" program, where both HudsonAlpha and associate company personnel teach basics and applications of biotechnology for a five-night series of classes. Support Dr. Lamb's work.

Shawn Levy, Ph.D.

Faculty Investigator

Dr. Shawn Levy earned a B.S. from the University of New Hampshire in 1994, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Emory University in 2000. Levy developed transgenic mice to analyze the mitochondrial genome in mammals, and then went on to several faculty appointments at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, including the director of the Vanderbilt Microarray Shared Resource. His research interests include the development of computer software tools to enable physicians and researchers to better understand and use the complex data produced by genomic technologies such as those used to sequence the human genome. Other research interests include investigating the architecture and organization of the human genome and how different organizational patterns in the genome can be used to predict disease or choose the ideal therapy. Other research interests include how the genome changes during very early development. Understanding the earliest moments in the human genome will help develop better, non-invasive screening methods for genetic disorders as well as benefit assisted reproductive technologies. He joined HudsonAlpha in August 2009, and plans to continue his work on technology development while building a wide-ranging service operation based on the institute’s unique infrastructure. Support Dr. Levy's work.

Jeremy Schmutz

Faculty Investigator

Jeremy Schmutz began programming computers when he was five years old. He graduated from North Central College in Illinois in three years with a B.S. in computer science and a B.A. in biology. During college, he worked on DNA sequencing technology at Argonne National Laboratory that led to his first research position developing parallel sequencing systems at a small Silicon Valley startup company.

In 1996, Schmutz joined the newly formed sequencing group at the Stanford Human Genome Center (SHGC) to develop the computational infrastructure necessary for large scale DNA sequencing. Schmutz and his group finished and assembled the human sequence of chromosomes 5, 16 and 19. He also led the quality assessment of the human genome sequence that evaluated the accuracy and completeness of the final human genome sequence. Currently, Schmutz leads the informatics and production sequencing groups at the HudsonAlpha Genome Sequencing Center and continues to work on genome sequencing projects of plants and fungi. Support Schmutz's work.

Douglas T. Ross, M.D., Ph.D.

Visiting Investigator

Douglas T. Ross is chief scientific officer and co-founder of Applied Genomics Inc. He obtained his M.D. and Ph.D. in pathology from the University of Washington in 1994 while studying at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and did pathology training including serving as chief resident of laboratory medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. For his postdoctoral fellowship, he joined the then-emerging microarray project at Stanford University. As part of the team that initiated and scaled-up the human cDNA microarray gene expression profiling project he helped develop strategies for large-scale analysis of gene expression in human cancer. Ross then co-founded Applied Genomics Inc., one of the HudsonAlpha resident associate companies. AGI developed a process whereby complex gene expression data is used to target antibody production and generate datasets of protein expression across thousands of tumor tissues. The company is using these reagents and datasets to reveal a novel approach towards classification of cancer with great potential to account for the clinical variation among patients that clinicians have observed for decades.