Scientific Management Review Board
Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D.
Director
National Human Genome Research Institute
Eric D. Green, M.D., Ph.D. became the third director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in December 2009. Prior to this appointment, he was the Scientific Director of NHGRI, a position he has held since 2002. In addition, he serves as chief of the NHGRI Genome Technology Branch (since 1996) and director of the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center (NISC) (since 1997).
Born and raised in Saint Louis in December 1959, Dr. Green comes from a scientific family. His father, Maurice Green, Ph.D., is chairman of the Institute for Molecular Virology at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, and his brother Michael Green, M.D., Ph.D., is a molecular biologist at the University of Massachusetts at Worcester, where he directs the Program in Gene Function and Expression and is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Dr. Green received a Bachelor of Science in bacteriology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1981 and both a Ph.D. in cell biology and an M.D. in 1987 from Washington University in Saint Louis. From 1987 to 1992, he was a resident in laboratory medicine in the departments of pathology and internal medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine, serving as chief resident in laboratory medicine from 1990 to 1992.
For his Ph.D., Dr. Green studied sugar molecules that are attached to proteins. But the scientific debate about the possibility of a Human Genome Project raging in the late 1980s coupled with his clinical interests in laboratory-based diagnostics prompted him to switch scientific fields. Dr. Green became a postdoctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Maynard V. Olson, Ph.D., then at the Washington University School of Medicine genetics department and a pioneer in developing approaches for studying whole genomes.
In 1992, Dr. Green was appointed assistant professor of pathology, genetics, and internal medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine, as well as a co-investigator in the Human Genome Center at Washington University, which made substantial contributions to the early successes of the Human Genome Project.
Dr. Green was recruited to join the newly formed NHGRI Division of Intramural Research in 1994. Two years later, he earned tenure at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), rising to the rank of a senior investigator; that same year, he was also appointed chief of the Genome Technology Branch. The next year, he became the founding director of NISC.
In 2002, Dr. Green was named NHGRI scientific director and director of the NHGRI Division of Intramural Research.
Honors given to Dr. Green include a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (1989-1990), a Lucille P. Markey Scholar Award in Biomedical Science (1990-1994), induction into the American Society for Clinical Investigation (2002), the Lillian M. Gilbreth Lectureship for Young Engineers at the National Academy of Engineering (2001), an Alumni Achievement Award from Washington University School of Medicine (2005), and induction into the Americal Association of Physicians (in 2007). He is a Founding Editor of the journal Genome Research (1995-present) and a Series Editor of Genome Analysis: A Laboratory Manual (1994-1998), both published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. He is also Co-Editor of Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics (since 2005). Dr. Green has authored and co-authored over 240 scientific publications.
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