2011 17 October Elbert Branscomb interview

Elbert Branscomb, telephone interview by Kathryn Maxson and Robert Cook-Deegan, conducted from Durham, NC, 17 October 2011. Elbert Branscomb began his career as a theoretical physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). His research focused on the physical mapping of human chromosome 19, and through administrative roles Branscomb gained familiarity with the DOE and NIH committee, grant review, and advisory structures. At the start of HGP large-scale sequencing, Aristides Patrinos decided that the DOE human sequencing efforts needed consolidation. Branscomb became founding director of the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), an amalgamation of the DOE’s human sequencing efforts, which began production in 1997. He remained in this job until fall of 2000. This transcript is available beginning 20 March 2094. Keywords: Human Genome Project, HGP, interview, Bermuda Principles, Bermuda Accord, International Strategy Meetings on Human Genome Sequencing, data sharing, science policy, genomics, genome, genome sequence, genetics, DNA sequence, DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, NIH, National Institutes of Health, DOE, Department of Energy, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, LLNL, Joint Genome Institute, JGI, JGI director, Elbert Branscomb.This research was supported by the NHGRI-funded Duke Center for Public Genomics, P50 HG 003391, with supplementary funding from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation