HSPH Biostatistics and DFCI Data Science Colloquium
Thursday September 17th at 4:00PM
Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Kresge G3

John Quackenbush, PhD, Professor of Pediatrics and Human Genetics, Biological Sciences Division, University of Chicago
Member, National Institute for Theory and Mathematics in Biology
Professor Emeritus, Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

ABSTRACT: I started my scientific career as a theoretical physicist, where we believed that the laws of the physical universe arose from a series of “first principles.” However, the truth is that the universe is far more complex and mysterious than we imagined in Freshman Physics. But the idea of first principles was a foundational touchstone for thinking about problems.

Then I became a biologist.

Over the past three decades, we have sequenced the human genome, measured the activity of essentially every gene in a wide range of conditions, catalogued millions of genetic variants, and generated extraordinary amounts of data describing human health and disease. Throughout, biology has stubbornly refused to become simple. Genes do not act alone. Their effects depend on other genes, on cell type, on environment, on age, on sex, and on countless interactions that we are only beginning to understand. Everything, it seems, is connected. Unfortunately

In this talk, I will look back at my somewhat improbable journey from physics to the Human Genome Project and eventually to gene regulatory networks, precision medicine, and the study of biological complexity. Along the way, I will talk about some things we have learned, some things we thought we knew but probably didn’t, and a growing list of things I still don’t understand. I will also reflect on the people, places, accidents, and opportunities that shaped my scientific career— and on why, after more than 20 years at Harvard, I am leaving with more questions than answers and looking forward to spending the next decades finding out what comes next.