Justin Vaughn, Ph.D.
Computational biologist
Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit, USDA-ARS
Rm. 125 USDA Russell Research Center
950 College Station Rd, Athens, GA 30605
justin.vaughn@ars.usda.gov
(706) 546-3185
genemachine.net
Ph.D., Genetics and Bioinformatics, 2011, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
B.S., Biology, 2003, Samford University, Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Dr. Justin Vaughn studied general biology as an undergraduate at Samford University. He received his doctoral degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, working with Albecht von Arnim to develop computational pipelines for comparative transcriptomics in plants. As a postdoctoral researcher in Jeff Bennetzen’s lab at the University of Georgia, Athens, Dr. Vaughn characterized structural variation in rice populations and used this data to develop new models of tandem duplication formation. He also assisted on numerous genome sequencing projects ranging from orphan grains to culinary herbs. He moved to Zenglu Li’s group at the University of Georgia as a postdoctoral researcher and then research scientist. There, he helped in efforts to characterize the global soybean germplasm as well as dissect the genetic architecture of key agronomic traits such as seed composition. He has consulted on the design and implementation of numerous computational and interactive breeding tools, which aim to enhance the usefulness of genomic and phenotypic information in cultivar development. He is currently a computational biologist with the Genomics and Bioinformatics Research Unit at USDA-ARS.