Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology, has been named as one of the recipients of the first-ever Burroughs Wellcome Innovation Award in Functional Genomics.
Joining a field of 11 prominent scientists honored for their innovative research nationwide, Templeton was awarded a four-year $200,000 grant by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a private foundation dedicated to supporting new research and advancements in medical science.
The Burroughs Wellcome Fund developed the novel award in connection with recent breakthrough advancements and research on genomic mapping and sequencing. The Innovation Award was designed to bring new ideas into the field of gene research and to help speed the sequencing of current genomic data.
Templeton received the grant for his work on "Cladistic analyses of epistasis among candidate genes influencing common disease." This represents a three-pronged approach to develop a computational method, based on a family-tree structure, that analyzes the roles of gene interactions in complex diseases, such as coronary artery disease.
Templeton, who joined the faculty in 1977, is a renowned population and evolutionary biologist who has analyzed the genomes of many different species to better understand their evolution and their survival. Since 1984, he has been the head of the Evolutionary and Population Biology Program in the University's Division of Biological Sciences.
