2019: Nathaniel Pearson

This thread is for the 2019 Community Seat election for the Board of Directors of the Open Humans Foundation. Below you will find the introduction for the candidate and have the opportunity to ask them any questions you might have for them.

Nathaniel’s introduction
Exploring what inner data say, about our health and history, has long driven my work. And teaming with fellow geeks, caregivers, and layfolk has made that a joy. The chance now, to help guide how we Open Humans bring our big ideas to life, as an anchor cohort for the biodata-informed future, would fulfillingly continue that effort. To that aim, I bring strong grounding in genomics, a passion to learn new stuff (hello microbiomes!…), and team spirit.

Background-wise, I trained in evolutionary genomics at Stanford and U. Chicago, led collaborative science at ships both small (Knome) and big (New York Genome Center), and teach genetic counseling students as guest faculty at Sarah Lawrence. To help folks pool personal biodata to drive crowd discovery, I launched the Empowered Genome Community in 2012 and recently founded the free, good cause-allied personal immunogenomics company, Root, to honor tissue donor volunteers with well grounded insights from their own match-screened genes.

Links
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/GenomeNathan
Blog: http://genomena.com/
Slides about various projects: https://www.slideshare.net/NathanielPearson
Talks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX0culYjU_A (whole-genome talk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxkL-KtUaJY (HLA talk)

Questions
Please feel free to post your questions for Nathaniel below!

Hola all!
Much looking forward to thinking with folks, on what we in OH can and ought best do together, both near- and long-term. As moods strike, please reach out and let’s discuss what’s on our ever-inquiring minds.