Adam Phillippy, PhD

Senior Investigator

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adam.phillippynih.gov

Adam is the director of the Center for Genomics and Data Science research and head of the Genome Informatics Section at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI). His lab develops efficient computational methods for analyzing DNA sequencing data, including tools for genome assembly, alignment, clustering, forensics, and metagenomics. He is a co-founder of the Telomere-to-Telomere Consortium and Vertebrate Genomes Project, which seek to enable the complete and gapless assembly of human and all other vertebrate genomes. He received a B.S. in computer science from Loyola University Maryland in 2002, where he was advised by Dr. Arthur Delcher. He first worked as a bioinformatics engineer at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) with Dr. Mihai Pop, and later received a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland in 2010 with Dr. Steven Salzberg. After graduate school he led a bioinformatics group at the National Bioforensics Analysis Center before joining NHGRI in 2015. In 2019, he was awarded tenure by the NIH and received the U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. He was named by TIME magazine as one of the world’s most influential people of 2022 for his work on completing the human genome.