40 Facts About Sarah Tishkoff

Sarah Anne Tishkoff was born on December 26,1965 and is an American geneticist and the David and Lyn Silfen Professor in the Department of Genetics and Biology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sarah Tishkoff serves as a director for the American Society of Human Genetics and is an associate editor at PLOS Genetics, G3, and Genome Research.

Sarah Tishkoff is a member of the scientific advisory board at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Sarah Tishkoff was able to link evolution of cattle domestication to lactase persistence.

Sarah Tishkoff was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017.

Sarah Tishkoff was born on December 26,1965, in Los Angeles, California.

Sarah Tishkoff moved from Los Angeles to East Lansing, Michigan, when she was five, and from East Lansing to Klamath Falls, Oregon, in her early teens.

Sarah Tishkoff's father was a professor of hematology and oncology at the University of California, Los Angeles and later the Director of the Red Cross for the Midwest of the United States.

Sarah Tishkoff's mother was a professor of history at the Oregon Institute of Technology.

Sarah Tishkoff attended the University of California, Berkeley for her undergraduate degree.

Sarah Tishkoff's career was significantly influenced by several mentors throughout her education.

Sarah Tishkoff was further inspired by many of Wilson's graduate students, including Vincent Sarich, Mary Claire-King, and George Sensabaugh.

Sarah Tishkoff's unique teaching style and controversial comments piqued Tishkoff's interest in the field, and encouraged her to question human origins and the genetic basis of human traits more deeply.

Sarah Tishkoff cites her experience meeting the Khoisan people at a meeting on Khoisan origins in Cape Town, during her time in Johannesburg, as a transformative event, as the Khoisan people have one of the oldest genetic lineages in the world.

Sarah Tishkoff became a professor at the University of Maryland in 2000, and went to the field for the first time a year later.

Sarah Tishkoff's lab continues to conduct field work in Africa, taking care to do the research ethically.

Sarah Tishkoff is married to Evan Leach, whom she met on her first day at Yale graduate school.

Sarah Tishkoff graduated with a Bachelor of Science in genetics and a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.

Sarah Tishkoff went on to receive her Master of Philosophy in human genetics from the Yale School of Medicine in 1992.

Sarah Tishkoff completed her formal education upon acquiring her PhD in genetics from Yale University in 1996, under the continued advisement of Kenneth Kidd.

From 1997 to 2000, Sarah Tishkoff was a postdoctoral fellow at The Pennsylvania State University.

In 2000, Sarah Tishkoff became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In 2005, Sarah Tishkoff was promoted to Associate Professor and she held that position until she left the university in 2007.

In 2008, Sarah Tishkoff became the David and Lyn Silfen University Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 2012, Sarah Tishkoff became a Full Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently the David and Lyn Silfen University Professor.

Sarah Tishkoff currently holds appointments in the Department of Biology, which is within the University's School of Arts and Sciences, and in the Department of Genetics, which is within the University's School of Medicine.

In 2017, Sarah Tishkoff was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, which is considered a high honor that recognizes distinguished scientists in their respective fields.

Sarah Tishkoff currently serves on the board of director for the American Society of Human Genetics, and she is a member of the scientific advisory board at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Sarah Tishkoff is an associate editor at PLOS Genetics, G3, and Genome Research.

Sarah Tishkoff was involved in a study that rejected the hypothesis that ancestors of anatomically modern humans were genetically isolated in Africa.

Sarah Tishkoff has focused on the influence of malaria on human populations to study the genetic basis of resistance to infectious diseases.

In 2012, Sarah Tishkoff participated in a study published in Genome Biology that compared the hemoglobin levels between populations living at high and low altitudes in Ethiopia.

Sarah Tishkoff participated in the first study on variability in PTC taste perception.

Sarah Tishkoff participated in a study on the adaptive evolution of Western African Pygmies and three neighboring Bantu-speaking agricultural populations with whom they admixed.

Sarah Tishkoff has numerous open-access online videos of topics relevant to her work, released in conjunction with a variety of research organizations, academic conferences, and educational foundations.

Sarah Tishkoff participated in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Biointeractive Lecture Series on Bones, Stones, and Genes: The Origin of Modern Humans.

Similarly, Sarah Tishkoff has released a short series of research talks on African Genomics with the organization iBiology, whose mission is to "convey, in the form of open-access free videos, the excitement of modern biology and the process by which scientific discoveries are made".

At her time at University of Pennsylvania, Sarah Tishkoff became an Integrates Knowledge Professor in 2008 for her work in African ancestry, lactase persistence, and taste sensitivity.

In 2009, Sarah Tishkoff was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director's Pioneer Award to fund her research in Africa detailing genetic and environmental factors that influence human physiological traits.

Sarah Tishkoff was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2017, and is on the board of directors for the American Society of Human Genetics.