The New York Genome Center (NYGC) welcomes Evan Eichler, Ph.D., as Associate Member. Dr. Eichler will help lead the autism study for the Center for Common Disease Genomics (CCDG), at NYGC that was established through the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) common disease grant, in which NYGC was awarded $40 million over four years to explore autism.
By joining NYGC as an Associate Member, Dr. Eichler will take on an advisory role planning scientific initiatives with the leadership and faculty of NYGC. In addition, he will work with NYGC investigators on grants, genomic projects and other related endeavors.
“I look forward to closer ties with the NYGC,” said Dr. Eichler. “The expertise and resources being developed there are critical to moving autism genetics forward and I am excited that our work will help further reveal the risk factors contributing to this disorder.”
“We are extremely fortunate that Evan Eichler, one of the premier genomic scientists in the world, has decided to join David Goldstein at NYGC as our second Associate Member. Evan’s passion for genomics has been exhilara and productive for all of us in New York. He has been a key contributor to collaborative work that NYGC is doing with multiple institutions to develop a comprehensive understanding of autism spectrum disorders.” said Robert B. Darnell, M.D., Ph.D., NYGC’s Founding Director and CEO.
Evan Eichler, Ph.D., is a Professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator in the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He graduated with a BSc Honors degree in Biology from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1990. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX. After a Hollaender postdoctoral fellowship at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Dr. Eichler joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University in 1997 and in 2004 joined the University of Washington. He was a March of Dimes Basil O’Connor Scholar (1998-2001), appointed as an HHMI Investigator (2005), awarded an AAAS Fellowship (2006) and the American Society of Human Genetics Curt Stern Award (2008), and elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2012). He is an editor of Genome Research and has served on various scientific advisory boards for both NIH and NSF.
His research group provided the first genome-wide view of segmental duplications within human and other primate genomes, and he is a leader in the field of genome structural and copy number variation and its contribution to developmental disability and autism. The long-term goal of his research is to understand the evolution and mechanisms of recent gene duplication and its relationship to genomic instability, human disease and adaptation.
About the New York Genome Center
The New York Genome Center (NYGC) is an independent, nonprofit at the forefront of transforming biomedical research and clinical care with the mission of saving lives. As a consortium of renowned academic, medical and industry leaders across the globe, NYGC focuses on translating genomic research into clinical solutions for serious disease. Our member organizations and partners are united in this unprecedented collaboration of technology, science, and medicine. We harness the power of innovation and discoveries to improve people’s lives — ethically, equitably, and urgently. Member institutions include: Albert Einstein College of Medicine, American Museum of Natural History, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Columbia University, Cornell University/Weill Cornell Medicine, Hospital for Special Surgery, The Jackson Laboratory, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, The New York Stem Cell Foundation, New York University, Northwell Health (formerly North Shore-LIJ), The Rockefeller University, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Stony Brook University and IBM.
