Len Pennacchio

Dr. Len Pennacchio is a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), Deputy Director of the DOE Joint Genome Institute, and Adjunct Professor at the University of California Berkeley.  He received his PhD in Genetics from Stanford University in 1998 under Rick Myers and then served as a DOE Alexander Hollaender Distinguished Fellow at LBL under Eddy Rubin. He has authored over 150 publications and received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House for his contributions to the Human Genome Project and understanding mammalian gene regulation in vivo. Dr. Pennacchio has an extensive background in mammalian genetics and genomics as well as with DNA sequencing technologies and their application to address outstanding issues in both the biomedical, energy, and environment sectors. He serves in numerous advisory roles such as NHGRI’s Genome Sequencing Program, the Centre for Genomic Research at the University of Liverpool, as a past permanent member of NIH’s GCAT Study Section. He also is an Organizer and Co-Chair of both annual Advances in Genome Biology & Technology (AGBT) meetings as well as a “Systems Biology of Gene Regulation and Genome Editing” meeting hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Asia. Currently his research is heavily focused on understanding the spectrum of DNA mutations that contribute to human disease through in vivo functional studies.