Scientific Advisors

Pui-Yan Kwok, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor of Dermatology, University of California, San Francisco

Pui-Yan Kwok is the Henry Bachrach Distinguished Professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Kwok's research focuses on the development of new approaches to whole-genome analysis and their application to gene mapping and haplotyping. He pioneered the high-throughput discovery of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) across the human genome and was a member of the International HapMap Consortium Steering Committee. The inventor of several fluorescence-based SNP genotyping methods, Dr. Kwok more recently has been developing mapping and haplotyping methods based on microscopic analysis of single DNA molecules. Dr. Kwok received Ph.D. and M.D. degrees from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University. Dr. Kwok has authored over 110 publications and holds three patents.

Charles Lee, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Lee is currently the director of the molecular genetic research unit at Brigham and Women's Hospital, an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He also holds a cross-appointment as an adjunct associate professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Dr. Lee received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta and was a postdoctoral fellow at Cambridge University and at Harvard Medical School. He has authored over 100 publications in leading scientific journals and is an associate editor for the American Journal of Human Genetics. Dr. Lee serves on numerous committees—he is the chair of the American Society of Human Genetics Program Committee, founding principal investigator of the Genomic Structural Variation Consortium and co-chair of the Structural Genomic Variation Analysis group for the 1000 Genomes Project, an ambitious consortium that is sequencing the genomes of as many as 2,500 individuals from around the world to create the most detailed and medically useful picture, to date, of human genomic variation (www.1000genomes.org).

Paul R. Selvin, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and of Biophysics, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Paul Selvin is a professor of physics and biophysics and an affiliated professor of cell and developmental biology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is a University Scholar and was awarded the 2006 Raymond and Beverly Sakmann Award from Tel Aviv University for outstanding advances in biophysics and the 2004 Biophysical Society's award for Outstanding Young Investigator. Dr. Selvin has invented a nanoimaging technique called FIONA, or Fluorescence Imaging with One Nanometer Accuracy. He received a B.S. from the University of Michigan, a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Selvin has authored over 70 publications and holds five patents.