Immigration Law

IMMIGRANT OF THE DAY: AJAY ROYYURO - GENOGRAPHER

By Greg Siskind

Ajay Royyuro has a boring title - Senior Manager of IBM's Computational Biology Center. But the Indian-born scientist's job is very cool. Here's an interesting passage from his bio at IBM that I found especially interesting:

Ajay will be the lead scientist for IBM on The Genographic Project, working closely with Dr. Spencer Wells, National Geographic and the distinguished team of field researchers assembled to conduct DNA testing on indigenous populations of the world. He brings to The Genographic Project exceptional, in-depth talent in the computational analysis, simulation, mining and management of scientific data for large-scale research programs in life sciences.

I learned about Ajay in an article describing how five scientists see the world in the year 2050. Here's what he had to say

He predicted that before 2050, everyone will have personal genome.

"We will figure out everything that can be told from the genome, but still struggle with the basis of disease," he said.

People will have access to a steady stream of genetic data, and they will use that information to make choices of what to eat, for example.

"We will teach ourselves when not to touch the 'trigger,'" he said. "Today, we don't know how the machinery works. The genome is a parts list. We will get to a point where we can re-create things so we understand how it works or fails." The result will be a personalized, predictive model of behaviors based on an individual's genome.

Stem cells and synthetic biology (design and fabrication of biological components) will cure diseases in specific places rather than tolerate the absence of an organ or other tissue, Royyuru predicted.

Full post as published by Greg Siskind's Blog on May 04, 2008 (boomark / email).