Issue date: 1/16/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Sarah Tishkoff Professor Tishkoff does research on genetics in Africa. [Click to enlarge]

Professor Sarah Tishkoff has spent nearly two decades traveling to and from Africa to study genetic variation and evolutionary adaptation.

Now, she is traveling to Penn's campus to become the sixth Penn Integrates Knowledge professor - and the first woman to be appointed.

The PIK program was implemented by University President Amy Gutmann as a University-wide initiative to recruit scholars whose research and teaching span multiple disciplines.

Tishkoff is "a model of a highly accomplished scholar that the PIK program was designed to bring to Penn," Gutmann said. "It's a real credit to our biology and genetics departments to have recruited [her]."

Tishkoff's appointment is shared between the Department of Genetics in the School of Medicine and the Department of Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences.

She came to Penn because of the unique opportunity to have a joint position and work with resources that enable collaboration, she said.

"It's a great community of people doing research in what I'm interested in," she added.

Through a range of projects, Tishkoff studies how genetic diversity affects differences among human populations.

She focuses on Africa, which is underrepresented in the study of genetic variation although it played a central role in human evolution.

"There are so many things we don't know, like where and when in Africa modern humans originated," she said.

Reaching new frontiers of research, her lab has compiled one of the world's largest DNA databases. It represents more than 7,000 Africans from over 100 ethnic groups.

"There is an amazingly high level of diversity and complex history," she said.

Tishkoff's recent projects include working to identify the genetic basis of metabolism and resistance to infectious diseases such as malaria.

She is also studying genetic connections between various click speaker groups, examining the co-evolution of genes and language.

Tishkoff was named one of Popular Science magazine's "Brilliant Ten" American scientists in 2003.

In addition to her research, she will teach undergraduate and graduate courses on the human genome and evolutionary history.

Gutmann said that PIK's success so far may enable Penn to exceed its original goal of recruiting 18 professors.

She expects another appointment by the end of the semester.

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