Session Abstract
Session Synopsis: Explaining human longevity at the molecular level is an emerging and tantalizing area of research activity. To understand and decipher the underpinnings of human longevity large data sources, including massive crowd source genealogy records, are being analyzed. This session will focus on applying newly developed informatics analytics in an attempt to unravel the genetic architecture of longevity.
Session Chair Profile
M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer, Human Longevity Inc.
Biography
Dr. Perkins is a visionary physician, scientist, and executive who is responsible for leading all clinical and therapeutic operations at the HLI. This includes collecting and utilizing phenotype data, development of the consumer clinics business, and guiding stem cell therapeutics. Prior to joining HLI, Dr. Perkins was Executive Vice President for Strategy and Innovation, and Chief Transformation Officer at Vanguard Health Systems, a large multi-state, for-profit, integrated health services provider with nearly 46,000 employees. He helped transform Vanguard from a traditional fee for service healthcare model, to a fee for value, “population health” model. Some of his innovative solutions there included: establishing Accountable Care Organizations to improve primary care, implementing an award winning tele-radiology program, and starting a $167 million venture capital fund to support Vanguard’s transformation programs. Dr. Perkins began his career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1989 after completing his residency training and chief residency in internal medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. At the CDC he led some of the most important and high profile programs and published more than 120 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters.
Speaker Profile
Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Systems Biology, Columbia University; Core Member, New York Genome Center
Biography
Dr. Yaniv Erlich is a Core Member at the New York Genome Center and Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Computational Biology at Columbia University. Before that, he was an Independent Fellow/Principal Investigator at the Whitehead Institute, MIT. Dr. Erlich received his bachelor’s degree from Tel-Aviv University, Israel (2006) and a PhD from the Watson School of Biological Sciences at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (2010). His research interests are computational human genetics and his studies were featured multiple times by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the international media. Dr. Erlich is the recipient of DARPA’s Young Faculty Award (2017), the Burroughs Wellcome Career Award (2013), Harold M. Weintraub award (2010), the IEEE/ACM-CS HPC award (2008), and he was selected as one of 2010 Tomorrow’s PIs team of Genome Technology. Dr. Erlich will join MyHeritage.com as the Chief Science Officer this summer.
Talk
Understanding Longevity Using 86,000,000 Individuals
The genetic architecture of longevity is poorly understood. To address this issue, we leveraged massive crowd source genealogy records of MyHeritage.com and constructed a single pedigree of >106 individuals spanning many generations up to the 15th century. My talk will report tracing segregation of longevity in families and testing complex hypotheses regarding the genetic architecture of longevity.
