Gonçalo Rocha Abecasis (born 1976) is a

Portuguese American Portuguese Americans (), 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 others who are not nativ ...

biomedical researcher at the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

, serves as Vice President & Chief Genomics and Data Science Officer at the Regeneron Genetics Center, 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 Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

and

Macau Macau or Macao is a special administrative regions of China, special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (PRC). With a population of about people and a land area of , it is the most List of countries and dependencies by p ...

(then

Portuguese Macau Macau was under Portuguese Empire, Portuguese rule from the establishment of the first official Portuguese settlement in 1557 until its Handover of Macau, handover to China in 1999. It comprised the Municipality of Macau and the Municipality of ...

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

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

degree in Genetics from the

University of Leeds The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...

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, human beings. Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, populatio ...

from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

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++. 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 (1KGP), taken place from January 2008 to 2015, was an international research effort to establish the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation at the time. Scientists planned to sequence the genomes of at least o ...

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 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 significant contribution to the field of computational biolog ...

from the International Society for Computational Biology, giving a keynote speech at the ISMB, and was named a

Pew Scholar The Pew Charitable Trusts is an independent non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1948. Pew's stated mission is to serve the public interest by "improving public policy, informing the public, and invigorating civic life". ...

by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2005. His work was cited in 2010 by US Vice-President

Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...

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 success indicators such as winning t ...

of 145 and 144,018 citations.

Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters Corporation ( ) is a Canadian multinational corporation, multinational content-driven technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate. The company was founded in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and maintains its headquarters at 1 ...

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 ASHG Scientific Achievement Award was established in 2001 and is presented annually by the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) for outstanding scientific achievements in human genetics that have occurred in the last 10 years. The award w ...

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, ...

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

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), known as 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, Engineerin ...

in October 2014.

Personal life

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

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abecasis, Goncalo 21st-century 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