About Jim Kent
As a graduate student at the University of California Santa Cruz, Jim Kent made
national headlines in June, 2000 when he performed the public project human genome
assembly hours ahead of Celera, helping to keep our collective DNA out of patent disputes
for years to come. Jim went on to write BLAT and the UCSC Human Genome Browser to help
analyze this important data. Jim received his PhD in Biology in 2002. He is currently
a research scientist at UCSC where he helps maintain and upgrade the browser, and has worked on recent
projects such as comparitive genomics and Parasol, job control management software for
the UCSC kilocluster. Jim lives in Santa Cruz with his wife and two children.
O'Reilly Interview with Jim Kent: Keeping Genome Data Open by Bruce Stewart. Jim talks about his work on the human genome assembly and the importance of open data.