Len A. Pennacchio is an American molecular biologist, the head of the Genetic Analysis Program and the Genomic Technologies Program at the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California. [1]
Pennacchio did his undergraduate studies at Sonoma State University and then went on to graduate studies at Stanford University, receiving a Ph.D. in genetics in 1998. He became a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1999, and joined the Joint Genome Institute in 2003. He retains his Lawrence Berkeley affiliation as well. [1]
Pennacchio contributed to the Human Genome Project with an analysis of human chromosome 16. [2] His research has also explored gene regulation, [3] the genetic basis of differences in body shape between different individuals, [4] conserved sequences in the genome, [5] and connections between junk DNA and heart disease. [6]
In 2008, Genome Technology magazine named him as one of 30 promising young researchers in their annual "Tomorrow's PIs" edition. [7]