Who advised Jim Kent on the first rough human-genome assembly?

David Haussler advised Jim Kent on the first rough human-genome assembly at UC Santa Cruz.

Haussler was a UC Santa Cruz computer science professor and an early leader in bioinformatics. When the Human Genome Project’s public consortium needed help analyzing and assembling its immense collection of sequence fragments, Haussler recruited and collaborated with Kent, then a graduate student.

Kent wrote most of the crucial GigAssembler software, while Haussler provided scientific direction, computational expertise and institutional leadership. Haussler also helped assemble the UCSC team and arrange the computing resources used to run the program. Their work produced the first public working draft in June 2000, which UCSC released online in July.

This is why the roles can be confused. Kent is credited with writing the program and carrying out the key assembly, whereas Haussler advised him and led the broader UCSC effort. Craig Venter headed the competing Celera project, Francis Collins directed the NIH genome center, and Maynard Olson led a major sequencing center at Washington University.