Jay Shendure will take a position as an assistant professor in the department of genome sciences at the University of Washington, In Sequence has learned. Shendure will join the university in the fall. He is currently completing his MD-PhD at Harvard University in George Church’s group, where he worked on developing the polony sequencing method.
The X Prize Foundation has appointed Leena Peltonen to its scientific advisory board for the Archon X Prize for Genomics. Peltonen is currently an academy professor at the University of Helsinki and National Public Health Institute in Finland and a visiting professor at the Broad Institute.
Peltonen is also a co-director of the Biomedicum Research Program on Molecular Medicine and director of the Nordic Center of Excellence in Disease Genetics. Her research group has used study samples from Finland to characterize the genetic background of several monogenic diseases and to identify disease alleles for lactose intolerance, familial combined hyperlipidemia, and multiple sclerosis.
She was the founding chair of the Department of Human Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is the current president of the Human Genome Organization.
The $10 million Archon X Prize for Genomics will be awarded to the first team that successfully sequences 100 human genomes in 10 days.
Upstream Biosciences has appointed Edward Kiruluta to its scientific advisory board. Kiruluta is vice president of engineering at sales and marketing software firm DemandTec. Previously, Kiruluta was senior director of informatics at Merck Research Labs, where he led development of the company’s Target Genome Index, a database that integrated clinical data with genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics technologies.
Prior to joining Merck, Kiruluta was chief technology officer and vice president of R&D at DoubleTwist (formerly Pangea Systems).