Dr. Greg Cooper received a B.A. in microbiology and a B.S. in mathematics and statistics in 2001 from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He received his Ph.D. in genetics from Stanford University in 2006, working with Arend Sidow. He then pursued postdoctoral training at the University of Washington in Seattle, working with Evan Eichler and Debbie Nickerson, before moving to HudsonAlpha in September of 2010.
Cooper has a long-standing interest in the structure, function and evolutionary history of the human genome, and understanding how genomic variation among human individuals contributes to disease. He has developed and applied a variety of approaches to relate genome sequence and genome function, including both evolutionary and functional analyses. He also has conducted genome-wide analyses of several biomedically important traits, including drug response, cardiovascular disease and early childhood neurological disease. Regarding the latter, Cooper developed methods to detect large structural mutations in human genomes using array-based genotyping technologies, and applied these methods to identify mutational contributors to autism and intellectual disability.
At HudsonAlpha, Cooper’s research program will center on the above themes, with specific projects including computational analyses of the relationship between mammalian evolution and modern-day diversity, functional analysis of genetic contributions to gene expression and the identification and characterization of deleterious mutations that play causal roles in human disease. His lab will focus on the challenges and opportunities presented by affordable, routine sequencing of human genomes, driven by the long-term goal of understanding how our genomes shape our lives.