Gonçalo Rocha Abecasis (born 1976) is a

Portuguese American Portuguese Americans ( pt, português-americanos), also known as Luso-Americans (''luso-americanos''), are citizens and residents of the United States who are connected to the country of Portugal by birth, ancestry, or citizenship. Americans and ...

biomedical researcher at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

and was chair of the Department of Biostatistics in the School 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. His group develops statistical tools to analyze the genetics of human disease.

Education and early life

Abecasis is the oldest of 12 children in his family, born in Moura to José Manuel and Maria Teresa. He grew up in Portugal and

Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...

(then

Portuguese Macau Portuguese Macau (officially the Province of Macau until 1976, and then the Autonomous Region of Macau from 1976 to 1999) was a Portuguese Empire, Portuguese colony that existed from the first official Portuguese settlement in 1557 to the ...

). After learning computer programming in a high school club, he received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

degree in Genetics from the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

in 1997, working with Mary Anne Shaw, and a D. Phil in

human genetics Human genetics is the study of inheritance as it occurs in human beings. Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, population gene ...

from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

in 2001, working with William Cookson and Lon Cardon.

Research

Abecasis works on statistical and computational approaches to human genetic disease, including psoriasis and cardiovascular diseases. His group develops tools to analyze and visualize biomedical data, often using

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

. 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 by Michael Boehnke. He is a proponent of

data sharing Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...

. His work has included the

1000 Genomes Project The 1000 Genomes Project (abbreviated as 1KGP), launched in January 2008, was an international research effort to establish by far the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation. Scientists planned to sequence the genomes of at least one th ...

and a collaboration with Oxford researchers.

Awards and honours

Abecasis won an Excellence in Research Award from the University of Michigan School of Public Health in 2008, and he became a professor at the University of Michigan in 2009. He won the 2013

Overton Prize The ISCB Overton Prize is a Awards in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, computational biology prize awarded annually for outstanding accomplishment by a scientist in the early to mid stage of his or her career. Laureates have made significan ...

from the International Society for Computational Biology, giving a keynote speech at the ISMB, and was named a Pew Scholar by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2005. His work was cited in 2010 by US Vice-President Joe Biden in a speech on the importance of biomedical research regarding the Recovery Act Innovation Report. His published work is influential - as of 2018, he had an

h-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

of 145 and 144,018 citations.

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational media conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where it is headquartered at the Bay Adelaide Centre. Thomson Reuters was created by the Thomson Corpora ...

noted that he had 10 'hot papers' (in the top 0.1% by citations) in 2009. He was also noted for his 'hot papers' in 2011 and 2012. In October 2014, he was awarded the

Curt Stern Award The Curt Stern Award, also known as the Stern Award, honors the memory of Curt Stern (1902–1981) as an outstanding and pioneering human geneticist. Established in 2001, this award is presented annually by the American Society of Human Genetics (AS ...

in Human Genetics by the

American Society of Human Genetics The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), founded in 1948, is a professional membership organization for specialists in human genetics. As of 2009, the organization had approximately 8,000 members. The Society's members include researchers, a ...

(jointly with Mark J. Daly). He was elected to the

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, E ...

in October 2014.

Personal life

Goncalo is married to University of Michigan scientist Cristen Willer. They have five children.
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abecasis, Goncalo Portuguese biologists University of Michigan faculty American bioinformaticians Statistical geneticists Genetic epidemiologists Alumni of the University of Leeds Alumni of the University of Oxford Portuguese emigrants to the United States 1976 births Living people People from Moura, Portugal Overton Prize winners Members of the National Academy of Medicine