Prominent researchers Eugene Myers and David Haussler, who each played a central role in the decoding of the human genome, will present a joint lecture on the "Impact of Human Genome Research: Present and Future" April 22 at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The 90-minute talk is the fourth Mervyn Young Memorial Lecture and will begin at 3:15 p.m. in Ramaley Biology Building room C250. The presentation is intended for a general audience, and is free and open to the public.
Both men are distinguished academics and will present their personal perspectives on this area of research, including the most important implications of the work and what developments should be expected over the next few decades.
Myers is a professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley and the former director of computational projects at Celera Genomics. He was on the faculty at the University of Arizona when he co-developed the BLAST program for fast, sensitive database searches, which is considered a seminal event in the creation of bio-informatics. He also developed the methodology for assembling genome sequences from short DNA sequences.
Haussler is a professor of biomolecular engineering at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His work was a key component of the international collaboration to complete the reference sequence, and his research group has made continuing contributions to the discovery of information in the sequence, such as finding the genes and characterizing the evolutionary properties uncovered by comparing the mouse and human sequences.
Both men are CU-Boulder alumni and former students of computer science Professor Andrzej Ehrenfeucht. Myers earned his doctorate from CU-Boulder in 1981 and Haussler earned his in 1982. They will be in Boulder to receive the Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award from the College of Engineering and Applied Science at an evening banquet.
The Mervyn Young Memorial Lecture Series was established through a private endowment in the department of computer science to explore issues of computing technology and society. Other speakers in the series have included Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems; Paul Horn, IBM senior vice president and director of research; and Richard Belluzzo, chief executive officer of Quantum.
For more information call the computer science department at (303) 492-6101.