Richard M. Myers

Richard Myers, PhD, leads the Institute and supplies the strategic oversight for the research enterprise, including sustaining a large, active laboratory. In addition to his role as President and Science Director and M. A. Loya Chair in Genomics at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Myers continues to conduct research using genomics tools and genetics to understand how genes interacting with the environment contribute to human diseases and other traits. Myers is a native of Selma, Ala., and joined the Institute in 2008. He brings 35 years’ experience in genetics and genomics to the position. Myers previously directed the Stanford Human Genome Center, one of the first U.S. human genome centers, pioneering the next generation sequencing techniques that are elemental to the field today. Under Myers’ direction, the Stanford Human Genome Center contributed more than 10% of the data in the public Human Genome Project’s efforts to sequence the human genome. Myers earned his BS in biochemistry from The University of Alabama and PhD in biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley.