Dr. Jennifer Troyer
Program Director
Human Heredity and Health in Africa
Division of Genome Sciences
Dr. Jennifer L. Troyer joined the National Human Genome Research Institute as a program director in 2013 (http://www.genome.gov/27556611). Her main responsibility is as part of the team administering Human Health and Heredity in Africa (H3Africa), a Common Fund (trans-NIH) initiative that facilitates applying contemporary research approaches to the study of genomics and environmental determinants of common diseases with the goal of improving the health of African populations.
Dr. Troyer earned a B.A. in Biology from Earlham College, a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of Connecticut, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute and Colorado State University. She started her career in classical and molecular genetics using Drosophila as a model organism to study the phenomenon of concerted evolution. She then moved on to lentiviruses and became interested in viral and host interactions. Her research has ranged from cats to lions to humans, but primarily focused on genetic variations in the virus and host that alter the outcome of infection. She has experience in leading Genome Wide Association Studies and has participated in international consortium efforts to identify host restriction factors for HIV/AIDS.
More recently, Dr. Troyer was in charge of technology development and genomics research in a core service lab at the National Cancer Institute, where she gained experience in next generation and single-molecule sequencing and cancer genomics.