Jonathan Eisen

Jonathan A. Eisen, Ph.D., is a Professor at U. C. Davis. His lab is in the UC Davis Genome Center and he hold appointments in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and the Department of Evolution and Ecology in the College of Biological Sciences. In addition he holds an Adjunct appointment at the Department of Energy Joint Genome Institutein Walnut Creek, CA. His research focuses on the mechanisms underlying the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). Most of his work involves the use of high-throughput DNA sequencing methods to characterize microbes and then the use and development of computational methods to analyze this type of data. In particular, his computational work has focused on integrating evolutionary analysis with genome analysis—so-called phylogenomics. Prior to moving to UC Davis Dr. Eisen was on the Faculty at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and helped pioneer many types of “phylogenomic” studies integrating evolutionary analyses and genomics. While there he held an Adjunct Appointment in theBiology Department at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Eisen earned his PhD in 1998 from Stanford University in Biological Sciences where he worked on the evolution of DNA repair processes in the lab of studied with Prof. Philip Hanawalt. Dr. Eisen earned his undergraduate degree in Biology from Harvard College in 1990.