Gonçalo Abecasis

Gonçalo Rocha Abecasis (born 1976) is a Portuguese American biomedical researcher at the University of Michigan and was chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the School of Public Health. He leads a group at the Center for Statistical Genetics in the Department of Biostatistics, where he is also the Felix E. Moore Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics and director of the Michigan Genomic Initiative.[4] His group develops statistical tools to analyze the genetics of human disease.[5]

Gonçalo Abecasis
Abecasis giving a keynote speech at ISMB
Born
Gonçalo Rocha Abecasis

(1976-05-08) May 8, 1976[1]
NationalityPortuguese
Alma materUniversity of Leeds
University of Oxford
SpouseCristen Willer[1]
Children5
AwardsOverton Prize (2013)[2]
Scientific career
FieldsBioinformatics
Computational biology
Biostatistics
InstitutionsUniversity of Michigan
ThesisMethods for fine mapping complex traits in human pedigrees (2001)
Doctoral advisorWilliam Cookson[3]
Doctoral studentsMingyao Li
Websitewww.sph.umich.edu/csg/abecasis/
Notes
Works at Regeneron

Education and early life

Abecasis is the oldest of 12 children in his family, born in Moura to José Manuel and Maria Teresa.[1] He grew up in Portugal and Macau (then Portuguese Macau). After learning computer programming in a high school club, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in Genetics from the University of Leeds in 1997, working with Mary Anne Shaw, and a D. Phil in human genetics[3] from the University of Oxford in 2001, working with William Cookson and Lon Cardon.[6][7]

Research

Abecasis works on statistical and computational approaches to human genetic disease, including psoriasis and cardiovascular diseases.[6] His group develops tools to analyze and visualize biomedical data, often using C++.[6] He first applied his programming knowledge during his Ph.D. studies to develop tools to analyze the data on asthma susceptibility that his project was generating. He continued as a biostatistician when he moved to Michigan in 2001, where he was recruited and mentored by Michael Boehnke.[2][6][7] He is a proponent of data sharing.[7] His work has included the 1000 Genomes Project[8] and a collaboration with Oxford researchers.[4]

Awards and honours

Abecasis won an Excellence in Research Award from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 2008,[9] and he became a professor at the University of Michigan in 2009.[6] He won the 2013 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology, giving a keynote speech at the ISMB,[2] and was named a Pew Scholar by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2005.[10] His work was cited in 2010 by US Vice-President Joe Biden in a speech on the importance of biomedical research regarding the Recovery Act Innovation Report.[7][11]

His published work is influential - as of 2018, he had an h-index of 145 and 144,018 citations. Thomson Reuters noted that he had 10 'hot papers' (in the top 0.1% by citations) in 2009.[12] He was also noted for his 'hot papers' in 2011 and 2012.[4][13]

In October 2014, he was awarded the Curt Stern Award in Human Genetics by the American Society of Human Genetics (jointly with Mark J. Daly).[14]

He was elected to the Institute of Medicine in October 2014.[15]

Personal life

Goncalo is married to University of Michigan scientist Cristen Willer. They have five children.[1][16]

References
  1. "Gonçalo Rocha Abecasis". Geneall.net. 2014. Archived from the original on 2014-01-08.
  2. Fogg, C. N.; Kovats, D. E. (2013). "International Society for Computational Biology Honors Gonçalo Abecasis with Top Bioinformatics/Computational Biology Award for 2013". Bioinformatics. 29 (12): 1586–1587. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btt251. PMID 23661697.
  3. Abecasis, Gonçalo (2002). Methods for fine mapping complex traits in human pedigrees (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford.
  4. Greenberg, Will (12 June 2013). "University professor earns accolades for research on genome sequencing". Michigan Daily. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  5. Goncalo Abecasis publications indexed by Google Scholar
    Abecasis, Gonçalo R.'s publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
    - Gonçalo R. Abecasis at DBLP Bibliography Server
    - Abecasis, G. R.; Cherny, S. S.; Cookson, W. O.; Cardon, L. R. (2001). "Merlin—rapid analysis of dense genetic maps using sparse gene flow trees". Nature Genetics. 30 (1): 97–101. doi:10.1038/ng786. PMID 11731797. S2CID 12226524.
    - Li, H.; Handsaker, B.; Wysoker, A.; Fennell, T.; Ruan, J.; Homer, N.; Marth, G.; Abecasis, G.; Durbin, R.; 1000 Genome Project Data Processing Subgroup (2009). "The Sequence Alignment/Map format and SAMtools". Bioinformatics. 25 (16): 2078–2079. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp352. PMC 2723002. PMID 19505943.
    - Gonçalo Abecasis publications indexed by Microsoft Academic
    - The International HapMap Consortium; et al. (2003). "The International HapMap Project" (PDF). Nature. 426 (6968): 789–796. Bibcode:2003Natur.426..789G. doi:10.1038/nature02168. hdl:2027.42/62838. PMID 14685227. S2CID 4387110.
    - Frazer, K. A.; Frazer, D. G.; Ballinger, D. R.; Cox, D. A.; Hinds, L. L.; Stuve, R. A.; Gibbs, J. W.; Belmont, A.; Boudreau, P.; Hardenbol, S. M.; Leal, S.; Pasternak, D. A.; Wheeler, T. D.; Willis, F.; Yu, H.; Yang, C.; Zeng, Y.; Gao, H.; Hu, W.; Hu, C.; Li, W.; Lin, S.; Liu, H.; Pan, X.; Tang, J.; Wang, W.; Wang, J.; Yu, B.; Zhang, Q.; et al. (2007). "A second generation human haplotype map of over 3.1 million SNPs". Nature. 449 (7164): 851–861. Bibcode:2007Natur.449..851F. doi:10.1038/nature06258. PMC 2689609. PMID 17943122.
  6. Karlin, Susan (17 September 2013). "Profile: Gonçalo Abecasis Mines Genomes for Biomedical Gold". IEEE Spectrum. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  7. Fogg, Christine N. (28 June 2013). "Congratulations to 2013 ISCB Overton Prize Winner: Goncalo Abecasis". ISCB. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  8. Durbin, R. M.; et al. (2010). "A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing". Nature. 467 (7319): 1061–1073. Bibcode:2010Natur.467.1061T. doi:10.1038/nature09534. PMC 3042601. PMID 20981092.
  9. "Faculty Awards for Excellence". University of Michigan School of Public Health. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  10. "Pew Scholars Directory". Pew Charitable Trusts Website. Archived from the original on 2014-03-04. Retrieved 2014-03-04.
  11. Serwach, Joe (25 August 2010). "Biden: U-M transforming economy through innovation". University of Michigan News Service. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  12. King, Christopher (March–April 2010). "The Hottest Research of 2009". Sciencewatch.com. Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  13. "The Hottest Scientific Researchers of 2012". Science Watch. Thomson Reuters. June 2013. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
    - King, Christopher (September 2012). "The Hottest Research of 2011". Sciencewatch.com. Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
  14. "Past Award Recipients". ashg.org. American Society of Human Genetics. October 2014. Retrieved 17 October 2014.
  15. "Institute Of Medicine Elects 70 New Members, 10 Foreign Associates". National Academy of Sciences. 20 October 2014. Retrieved 22 October 2014.
  16. "Gonçalo and Cristen's Picture Album". Gonçalo Abecasis. University of Michigan. Retrieved 17 December 2013.
    - "Cristen Willer Faculty Profile". University of Michigan Medical School Faculty. University of Michigan. Retrieved 8 February 2014.
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