About
2023 Thomas H. Roderick Memorial Lecture
Monday, July 17, 5:00 - 6:30 PM EDT
To view click here.
Gene regulation, selection, and the genetic architecture of complex traits
Jonathan Pritchard, Ph.D., Stanford University
RODERICK LECTURE SERIES
In 2015, Hilda K. Roderick and her family established the Roderick Lecture Fund, an endowment to honor the late Dr. Thomas H. Roderick, his tremendous contributions to The Jackson Laboratory and his passion for education - particularly the annual McKusick Short Course on human and mammalian genetics and genomics.
Tom joined The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor as a staff scientist in genetics where he remained for 37 years. His lifetime body of research included the effects of radiation on genetic material, behavioral genetics and later bioinformatics, publishing widely in genetics and genealogy. With others at the Laboratory, he developed the first online genetic database. During his career he co-directed the Annual Short Course on Medical and Experimental Mammalian Genetics. In 1968, Tom, together with local physicians Morris A. Lambdin and James H. Thaidigsman, and cytogeneticist Merrill C. Bunker, founded the Center for Human Genetics in Bar Harbor.
An original member of the international Human Genome Organization, Tom is credited with coining the term “genomics.” The word first appeared in a 1987 article by Victor McKusick and Frank Ruddle in the premier issue of the journal by the same name (McKusick and Ruddle 1987). In the article, Roderick states: “One evening, about 10 of us were… discussing possible titles for the new journal… when I suggested ‘genomics.’ Little did we know then that it would become such a widely used term.”
When asked what the Laboratory would be remembered for in terms of 20th century American science, Tom replied, “I think that The Jackson Laboratory will be remembered for good science” as well as its animal and data resources. Twenty-eight years before the dawn of The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine, Tom understood the innate relationship between research and patients, in much the same way he brought together genetics and genealogists, and doctors and families with a medical dilemma in the form of a genetic trait: “Most of our mission, I think, is basic research, but we have that interest in participating directly in something that has immediate value with respect to medical health understanding.”
2023 FEATURED SPEAKER
Jonathan Pritchard grew up in England before moving to Pennsylvania during high school. He received his BSc in Biology and Mathematics from Penn State University in 1994, and his PhD in Biology at Stanford in 1998. After that he moved to a postdoc in the Department of Statistics at Oxford University and then
to his first faculty job at the University of Chicago in 2001. Pritchard returned to Stanford University in 2013, where he is now a Professor in the Departments of Biology and Genetics.