Gonçalo Rocha Abecasis (born 1976) is aPortuguese American biomedical researcher at theUniversity of Michigan, serves as Vice President & Chief Genomics and Data Science Officer at the Regeneron Genetics Center,[4] and was chair of the Department of Biostatistics in theSchool of Public Health. He leads a group at the Center for Statistical Genetics in the Department of Biostatistics, where he is also the Felix E. Moore Collegiate Professor of Biostatistics and director of the Michigan Genomic Initiative.[5] His group develops statistical tools to analyze thegenetics of human disease.[6]
Abecasis works on statistical and computational approaches to human genetic disease, including psoriasis and cardiovascular diseases.[7] His group develops tools to analyze and visualize biomedical data, often usingC++.[7] He first applied his programming knowledge during his Ph.D. studies to develop tools to analyze the data on asthma susceptibility that his project was generating. He continued as a biostatistician when he moved to Michigan in 2001, where he was recruited and mentored byMichael Boehnke.[1][7][8] He is a proponent ofdata sharing.[8] His work has included the1000 Genomes Project[9] and a collaboration with Oxford researchers.[5]
Abecasis won an Excellence in Research Award from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 2008,[10] and he became a professor at the University of Michigan in 2009.[7] He won the 2013Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology, giving akeynote speech at the ISMB,[1] and was named aPew Scholar by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2005.[11] His work was cited in 2010 by US Vice-PresidentJoe Biden in a speech on the importance of biomedical research regarding the Recovery Act Innovation Report.[8][12]
His published work is influential - as of 2018, he had anh-index of 145 and 144,018 citations.Thomson Reuters noted that he had 10 'hot papers' (in the top 0.1% by citations) in 2009.[13] He was also noted for his 'hot papers' in 2011 and 2012.[5][14]
^abcFogg, C. N.; Kovats, D. E. (2013). "International Society for Computational Biology Honors Gonçalo Abecasis with Top Bioinformatics/Computational Biology Award for 2013".Bioinformatics.29 (12):1586–1587.doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btt251.PMID23661697.
^"Past Award Recipients".ashg.org. American Society of Human Genetics. October 2014. Archived fromthe original on 3 October 2014. Retrieved17 October 2014.
