My sincere apologies to the dedicated MassGenomics readers who’ve noticed the recent decline in new posts here. It’s a busy and tumultuous time for our institute.
Leadership Transition at MGI
For those who missed the announcement earlier this month: our center’s director Rick Wilson and co-director Elaine Mardis announced that they’re leaving to establish a new Institute for Genomic Medicine at Nationwide Children’s Hospital / Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.
We are still figuring out the transition plan, but the Washington University School of Medicine remains very committed to supporting our center and the people who work here. In other words, the McDonnell Genome Institute will continue on.
Large-scale Sequencing Opportunities
In the meantime, we are in the midst of large-scale sequencing efforts for the Centers for Complex Disease Genomics (CCDG), Alzheimers Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), and Gabriella Miller Kids First (GMKF) initiatives. These are all ambitious projects in which I’m intimately involved, which means they consume a lot of my time. On the bright side, they keep me at the forefront of genomics where I can continue to be useful to you.
Important note for fellow scientists: Even with our current commitments, the HiSeq X Ten remains a hungry beast, so please get in touch if you’re looking for low-cost genome sequencing. With the X Ten and other instruments, we can provide custom-targeted, exome, whole genome, and/or transcriptome sequencing for humans and model organisms.
More Science Fiction
Last but not least, some personal news that may help explain why I’ve had less free time to write on MassGenomics. As you know, Harper Voyager (an imprint of HarperCollins) published my debut novel earlier this year. I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve accepted an offer from my publisher for two more books, effectively making The Rogue Retrieval into a trilogy.
All of you have been enormously supportive of my science fiction writing as well as my science writing, and I hope that will continue.
Once the dust settles from this transition period, I should be posting at a more regular schedule. So please stick around!