Chief Scientific Officer
Before joining Genetic Alliance, Dr. Taft was Vice President of Scientific Research at Illumina where he led a team within Medical Genomic Research that includes the Illumina Clinical Services Laboratory. His focus was on the development and deployment of diagnostic whole-genome sequencing worldwide for children with rare and undiagnosed genetic disease. Previously, he was a group leader and senior research fellow at the University of Queensland and is an adjunct associate professor at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences. Dr. Taft holds various positions within industry organizations. He is a founding member of the Global Leukodystrophy Initiative, scientific advisor to the Mission Massimo Foundation, and co-chair of the Medical and Scientific advisory board of Global Genes. Dr. Taft obtained his Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from the University of California, Davis, on a Regent’s Scholarship, and his Ph.D. in Genomics and Computational Biology from the University of Queensland on a US National Science Graduate Foundation Research Fellowship.