Brandon Rice: Director, Platform Management
Lab / Organization: Resilience
I spent my fellowship research year studying Neanderthal variation in modern humans. Neanderthals and human populations interbred during a period of human evolution, which introduced Neanderthal-derived mutations into human genomes. These variants are still kicking around in human populations today. My research was aimed at identifying those Neanderthal variants that have been under positive selection since their introduction and to understand their function in humans. I work in industry now, so don’t really have a research focus. That being said, the companies I’ve worked at have generally involved sequencing and bioinformatics for basic research, diagnostics, and most recently therapeutics. From my time at UCSC, I am most proud of the company that my PI (Ed Green) and I co-founded, Dovetail Genomics, which was rooted in the work being done in Ed’s lab and facilitated by the university. Since leaving UCSC I have found gratification in discovering and articulating problems to solve that have a meaningful impact on people’s lives, and developing new technologies (typically with a strong emphasis on genomics) to address them. I found my way to product management in life sciences for a career. My continual goal since grad school has been to leave a positive, enduring impact on the world. Transparently, that has turned out to be harder than I expected, especially since the venues I’ve chosen are startup companies with the all chaos and dynamism you’d expect and more. Nonetheless, I remain committed to my goal and finding ways to make it work, and more importantly the right teams to make it work, at the companies I work for.