My Adventure Using Computer Science on the Genome Project Webb Miller Department of Computer Science and Engineering Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802 web b~,bio, cse. ps u. ed u A considerable number of computer scientists have become involved in the Human Genome Project. Their backgrounds before making that career change, the personal motivations for the decision, and their choices of new problems to attack vary tremendously. I can only tell you one of the many stories - mine. Around 1987 I decided to drop everything and spend all of my research time on the Genome Project. This represented a radical change, since my background in the area was almost non-existent. I hadn't even taken a biology course in high school or college. My degrees were in mathematics, and most of what I had worked on since graduation was completely unrelated to biology. However, I had a strong interest in, and a little knowledge of, algorithms, particularly algorithms for comparing sequences, and I enjoyed writing programs, both of which have been tremendously useful for my foray into bioinformatics. A number of factors influenced my decision. A key element was my friendship with Gene Myers, which began when
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