Speaker Profile

Nathan Pearson

Biography

Nathan Pearson, PhD, has long worked with fellow scientists, coders, caregivers, and layfolk (including historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., journalist Carl Zimmer, and rockers Ozzy Osbourne and Jill Sobule) to explore how our genomes shape and reflect key facets of health and history. Trained at Stanford and the University of Chicago, he served as Senior Director of Science and Research at Knome, and as Senior Director of Scientific Engagement and Public Outreach at the New York Genome Center. In founding Root, he melds his expertise to heartfelt experience: Having lost his mom at age 6, to blood cancer with no marrow donor, he knows first-hand how our most diverse and informative genes, HLA, bond humanity together. But realizing how hard it was to get back personal HLA insight, even for good-willed tissue donor volunteers, he set out to bring our key inner data to life, starting with the genes that say more for each person, for communities, and for science, than any other DNA.

Company Competition

Root Deep Insight
To help institutions engage earth’s biggest usefully genotyped cohort, Root gives >29M tissue-donor volunteers their own prismatically informative HLA data, wisely interpreted, to use in life and for science.
Website: rootdeep.com