Jim Kent
3510994
220281906
2008-06-19T02:51:01Z
Kevin
392462
rm unsourced bit
{{Infobox Person
| name = Jim Kent
| image = Jim Kent.JPG
| image_size = 180px
| caption = ''Photo courtesy of Jim Kent.''
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1960|2|10}}
| birth_place = [[Hawaii]]
| death_date =
| death_place =
| education = [[University of California, Santa Cruz]]
| occupation = [[Research scientist]]
| title =
| spouse =
| parents =
| children =
| nationality = [[United States]]
| website = [http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~kent/ Personal Webpage at UCSC]
}}
'''Jim Kent''' (born [[February 10]], [[1960]]) is an [[United States|American]] [[research scientist]] and [[computer programmer]]. He has been a major contributor to [[genome]] database projects.
== Biography ==
Kent was born in [[Hawaii]] and grew up in [[San Francisco, California]], [[United States| United States]]. He currently lives in [[Santa Cruz, California]] with new child Maia and his girlfriend Dorota.
While a graduate student in [[biology]] at the [[University of California, Santa Cruz]], he wrote the program that allowed the publicly funded [[Human Genome Project]] to assemble and publish the human genome database before the commercial effort by the company [[Celera Genomics]]{{ref|ora-2002}}. His efforts ensured that the human genome data remained in the [[Public Domain]] and were not patented into private [[Intellectual Property]].
Kent built a [[Grid computing|grid]] of cheap, commodity [[Personal Computer]]s running the [[Linux]] [[operating system]] and other [[Free software]] to beat Celera's, what was thought of then as the world's most powerful civilian computer. In June [[2000]], thanks to the work done by Kent and several others, the Human Genome Project was able to publish its data in the Public Domain just hours ahead of Celera. In [[2002]] [[Tim O'Reilly]] described Kent's work as "the most significant work of open source development in the past year".
Kent went on to write [[BLAT (bioinformatics)|BLAT]] (BLAST-like alignment tool) <ref name='pmid11932250'> {{cite journal|title=BLAT--the BLAST-like alignment tool.|journal=Genome research|date=2002- Apr|first=W James|last=Kent|volume=12|issue=4|pages=656–64|id=11932250 {{doi|10.1101/gr.229202. Article published online before March 2002}}|url=http://view.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11932250|accessdate=2007-11-08|doi=10.1101/gr.229202. Article published online before March 2002}}</ref> and the [[UCSC Human Genome Browser]] to help analyze important genome data, receiving his PhD in biology in 2002. Today at UCSC he works primarily on web tools to help understand the human genome. He helps maintain and upgrade the browser, and has worked on recent projects such as comparative genomics and [[Parasol]], a job control management software for the UCSC kilocluster.
== See also ==
* [[BLAT (bioinformatics)|BLAT]]
* [[Human Genome Project#The Role of Celera Genomics]]
== References ==
{{reflist}}
== Notes ==
#{{note|ora-2002}}{{cite web | title=
Keeping Genome Data Open - An Interview with Jim Kent | work=OReilly Network | url=http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/04/05/kent.html | accessdate=2005-12-23}}
== External links ==
{{Commonscat|Jim Kent}}
* [http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~kent/ Jim Kent's Personal Webpage at UCSC]
* [http://genome.cse.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgBlat BLAT program]
* [http://www.genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgGateway UCSC Human Genome Browser]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kent, Jim}}
[[Category:1960 births]]
[[Category:Living people]]
[[Category:Bioinformaticists]]
[[Category:American biologists]]
[[Category:American computer programmers]]
[[Category:University of California, Santa Cruz alumni]]
[[Category:University of California, Santa Cruz faculty]]