September 1, 2005

The Carolina Center for Genome Sciences and the Department of Genetics has recently assembled its first external advisory committee, comprised of an outstanding group of six scientific leaders throughout the country representing a variety of relevant disciplines. The charge for this committee is to advise CCGS/Genetics faculty and staff on research initiatives and training programs that are either ongoing or in planning stages. The wealth of knowledge and experience of the committee members will be a major asset in guiding the future growth of the Center and Department. The inaugural meeting of the external advisory committee will be on September 23, 2005 at UNC-CH. A brief description of each committee member is given below:

Dr. Ecker is one of the nation’s leading authorities on the molecular biology and genetics of plants. Ecker was a principal investigator in the multinational project that sequenced the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana, a modest weed that has become a model organism for the study of plant genetics. This wild mustard variety is the first plant to have its genome sequenced, an achievement expected to have widespread implications for agriculture and perhaps human medicine as well. Ecker is also widely regarded as one of the foremost experts on how the gaseous hormone ethylene regulates a variety of basic plant processes. For agriculture, ethylene gas is a vital chemical messenger important for such processes as fruit ripening and how plants respond to pathogenic organisms.

Dr. Eichler’s group combines computational and experimental techniques to study the role of duplicated regions during the course of human evolution. Their research specifically addresses a new paradigm that has emerged in the past few years in which particular regions of the human genome have been shown to be active in the acquisition, duplication, and dispersal of large gene-containing genomic segments. Dr. Eichler recently moved to the University of Washington in May 2004 from Case Western Reserve University, where he was an Assistant Professor of Genetics and Director of the Bioinformatics Core Facility. He is a member of the organizing committee for the International Human Genome Organization (HUGO). In March 2005 he was named an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Garner’s laboratories are in the Center for Biomedical Inventions and the McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development at UT Southwestern. He was initially recruited to UT Southwestern as Assistant Director of the university’s NIH-funded human genome center to develop hardware and software for high-throughput DNA mapping and sequencing. The hardware and software his group created are used by genome centers and individual laboratories throughout the country. Their current research interests span three major areas: 1) applied computational biology, 2) advanced instrumentation development and 3) genetics, genomics, and proteomics research that capitalizes on their software findings and instrumentation capabilities. He also serves as chair of the Biomedical Engineering Graduate Program, and co-directs the microarray core facility at UT Southwestern.

Dr. Nussbaum’s laboratory studies the underlying genetic contributions to neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. His two major areas of interest are Lowe syndrome and Parkinson’s disease. In addition to his roles at NHGRI, Dr. Nussbaum is an executive faculty member of the Joint NIH-Johns Hopkins University Genetic Counseling Training Program. He also administers the Center for Inherited Disease Research, a high-throughput genotyping facility funded by a consortium of 12 NIH institutes that supports genetic research worldwide. Dr. Nussbaum recently stepped down from his role as president of the American Society of Human Genetics, but continues to serve on its board of directors. In 2004, he was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, one of the highest honors in the fields of medicine and health.

Dr. Ringe is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of protein crystallography, structural biology, and protein structure/function relationships. Dr. Ringe is currently the Lucille P. Markey Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Brandeis University. Her laboratory’s research is focused on the structural basis of enzyme catalysis, the dynamic properties of proteins, the control of virulence gene transcription, and the biology of the quiescent state of eukaryotic cells. They use a range of tools including protein X-ray crystallography, molecular dynamics calculations, molecular biology, enzyme kinetics, synthetic organic chemistry, and yeast genetics. Dr. Ringe has served as chair of the Graduate Program in Biophysics at Brandeis, and as program director for biophysics at the National Science Foundation.

Dr. Woychik is a world-renowned geneticist with a background in both academia and industry, and has served as the director of The Jackson Laboratory since 2002. As an academic researcher, he spent 10 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where his group initiated a large-scale insertional mutagenesis program that provided the tools to generate mouse models and clone the genes associated with many human diseases including polycystic kidney disease and congenital hearing loss. He moved up the ranks at ORNL to become a Senior Research Scientist in the Life Sciences Division, Mammalian Genetics Section. In August 1997 he moved his laboratory to Case Western Reserve University and started a new position as Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Pediatrics, and as Professor in the Departments of Pediatrics, Genetics, and Pharmacology. Dr. Woychik brought his skills as both scientist and administrator to the pharmaceutical industry in 1998 when he was recruited to head the Parke-Davis Laboratory for Molecular Genetics. Dr. Woychik is an active member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology, the Society for Developmental Biology, as well as many national scientific committees.

back to top