Erich D. Jarvis

Erich, an alumnus of the Rockefeller University and former professor at Duke University, returned to Rockefeller in 2016 as a tenured professor heading the new Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language. As an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2008, Erich is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation’s Alan T. Waterman Award, an NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the 2015 Ernest Everett Just Award from the American Society for Cell Biology, and a 2019 NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award. He is also a member of the Hunter College Alumni Hall of Fame. As co-leader of an avian genomics consortium consisting of more than 200 scientists in 20 countries, he oversaw the sequencing of genomes from representative species of every avian order—48 genomes in all. Erich also now chairs the Vertebrate Genomes Project, formed with the goal of assembling high-quality genomes for all 70,000 vertebrate species on Earth. Jarvis also serves on The Scientist’s editorial advisory board.