Michael Eisen

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Michael Eisen
PhD)
Known forPublic Library of Science (PLOS)
AwardsBenjamin Franklin Award (Bioinformatics) (2002)
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of California, Berkeley
ThesisStructural Studies of Influenza A Virus Proteins (1996)
Doctoral advisorDon Craig Wiley[citation needed]
Websitemichaeleisen.org

Michael Bruce Eisen (born April 13, 1967) is an American computational biologist and the former

U.S. Senate from California as an Independent, though he failed to qualify for the ballot.[9]

Early life and education

Born in Boston, Eisen and his brother

Walt Whitman High School in 1985. Intending to major in mathematics at Harvard University, he realized that there [he may encounter] other more brilliant math students, it was a Good Will Hunting moment and he decided that he did not want to major in mathematics, '"You don't want to be Salieri to Mozart."' During his years at Harvard, Eisen worked on "unlocking the three-dimensional structures of proteins." He was shown a DNA microarray which taught him a '"new way of doing biology"'.[11]

Eisen completed his PhD at Harvard University in biophysics and a B.S. (also from Harvard) in Math.[12] He was under the supervision of Don Craig Wiley[13] while studying Influenza A virus Proteins.[14]

There are things that are really really difficult, those are the kinds of problems you do want to work on. It's not that easy to tell the difference between impossible problems and a problem that is really really difficult. But learning to do so is critically important. - Things I learned from working with Pat Brown (Patrick O. Brown) - 2015 [13]

After earning his doctorate, Eisen was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University in the lab of David Botstein, where he most notably developed a method for interpreting gene expression data from microarrays. The seminal research publication that Eisen authored about this project has been cited over 16,000 times.[15]

Baseball and biology

When Eisen lived in Tennessee he worked as a

Red Sox fanatic.[11] He and computational biologist James Fraser recorded a video for iBiology about the role baseball statistics influenced their research. Their argument is that sequencing DNA is similar to scoring a baseball game, and that many computational biologists learned to think about science computations from an obsessive interest in baseball stats. The exercise of comparing a specific player's stats to a database of other similar players allows a baseball fan to predict future performance. This same system works with proteins and predicting functions. As tools are developed that break down and track all stats concerning baseball players, so will technology improve with genetics. With both baseball and genetics, tools are being developed that refine the models.[16] In a lecture in 2015, Eisen stated that he received a computer from his grandfather for his twelfth birthday and spent the next five years teaching himself how to program so that he could keep track of baseball stats.[13]

Research

His academic research focuses on the

Louis Staudt).[18] His more recent research work has been on fruit flies and Drosophila[21] and how they "develop from a tiny single-celled egg to a mature adult. He says they hold insights into what goes wrong in people as they age."[12] He receives funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for his research.[21]

2018 U.S. Senate race

Main article: 2018 United States Senate election in California

Eisen announced through Twitter on January 25 his intent to run for U.S. Senate from California in 2018 for Democratic Senator

jungle primaries afforded him a better chance at making the final two for the general election, but he did not make the final two (which were Dianne Feinstein and Kevin de León).[12]

For a really long time, scientists have watched political processes erode — and have watched politicians openly deride science, dismissing the role that science plays in our everyday life. Scientists have been sitting here hoping that someone would come along and defend those principals. Politics, in my mind, should function similar to science. We should try to figure out what’s going on in the world and then debate the best way to do it, to make the world better. The best tools we have to characterize reality are the observational tools that science uses all the time. Too much of politics has rejected that basic principle that scientists live and breathe all the time.[12]

Eisen dropped out of the race when he failed to qualify for the June 2018 primary ballot.[23]

eLife editorship and firing

In 2019, Eisen was named the second editor-in-chief of the open-access scientific journal eLife. Under his leadership, the journal moved away from the traditional "review, then publish" model, instead requiring authors to submit preprints and then publishing journal editors' reviews alongside manuscripts, meaning that the journal neither accepted nor rejected submissions.[24] Eisen said that the move was intended to reduce the prominence of the publisher, and instead focus attention on authors and their work.

Eisen was fired from eLife on October 23, 2023 after tweeting a story by The Onion with the headline: "Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas." Eisen said "The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university".[25] At least five of eLife 's editors resigned and other scientists said they would stop participating in eLife events in solidarity with Eisen. A petition letter was organised to protest against Eisen’s firing. The petition, which was signed by over 2,000 scientists, academics and researchers, said eLife 's action is having a "chilling effect" on freedom of expression in academia.[26]

Open access advocacy

Throughout his career he has been an advocate for "

open access scientific publishing[27][28][29] and is co-founder of Public Library of Science (PLOS) and serves on the PLOS board, the Academic Steering & Advocacy Committee of Open Library of Humanities,[30] and is an adviser to Science Commons
.

In 2012 Eisen began protesting against the Research Works Act as part of his appeal to promote open access to information.[31]

Awards and honors

In 2002, Eisen was awarded the inaugural Benjamin Franklin Award in bioinformatics, for his work on PLOS and the open-access availability of his microarray cluster analysis software.[32]

References

  1. ^ Michael Eisen publications indexed by Google Scholar
  2. ^ Science News Staff (24 October 2023). "Prominent journal editor fired for endorsing satirical article about Israel-Hamas conflict". Science. Archived from the original on 24 October 2023. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
  3. ^ "eLife welcomes Michael Eisen as Editor-in-Chief". eLife. 2019-03-05. Retrieved 2019-03-05.
  4. ^ "Michael B. Eisen, PhD". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
  5. ^ Michael Eisen's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  6. ^
    S2CID 1280204
    .
  7. PMID 9872747
    .
  8. S2CID 1135137
    .
  9. ^ Cohen, Jon (2017-01-27). "Q&A: Michael Eisen bids to be first fly biologist in the U.S. Senate". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2020-04-13.
  10. ^ Okie, Susan. "NIH SCIENTIST A SUICIDE AMID PROBE OF PAPER". Washington Post. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  11. ^ a b Mechanic, Michael. "Steal This Research Paper! (You Already Paid for It.)". Mother Jones. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  12. ^ a b c d e f Krieger, Lisa (2017-02-04). "Bay Area molecular biologist Michael Eisen announces bid for U.S. Senate". San Jose Mercury News. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  13. ^ a b c "Michael Eisen: Baseball, mathematics and biology". India Bio Science. Archived from the original on 2021-12-21. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  14. OCLC 48938206
    .
  15. PMID 9843981
    .
  16. ^ "James Fraser & Michael Eisen: Baseball Meets Biology". Education. iBiology. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  17. ^
    PMID 9843981
    .
  18. ^
    S2CID 4382833
    .
  19. PMID 17994087
    .
  20. PMID 9843569
    .
  21. ^ a b Harmon, Amy; Henry Fountain (2017-02-06). "In Age of Trump, Scientists Show Signs of a Political Pulse". The New York Times. Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  22. S2CID 78431422
    . Retrieved 7 February 2017.
  23. ^ "Michael Eisen". Ballotpedia. Retrieved 2020-04-13.
  24. ^ Brainard, Jeffrey (20 October 2022). "Journal seeks to upend scientific publishing by only reviewing—not accepting—manuscripts". Science News. Retrieved 24 October 2023.
  25. ^ "Prominent journal editor fired for endorsing satirical article about Israel-Hamas conflict". Science. 2023-10-24. Retrieved 2023-10-24.
  26. ^ "Firing of science journal editor after Gaza post sparks free speech rift". NBC News. 2023-10-26. Retrieved 2023-11-01.
  27. ^ Eisen, Michael (8 October 2003). "Publish and be praised". Guardian. Retrieved 23 September 2013.
  28. PMID 14551926
    .
  29. ISSN 1059-1028
    . Retrieved 2023-08-11.
  30. ^ Howard, Jennifer (29 January 2013). "Project Aims to Bring PLoS-Style Openness to the Humanities". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 19 November 2013.
  31. ^ Dobbs, David (6 January 2012). "Congress Considers Paywalling Science You Already Paid For". wired.com. Retrieved 12 February 2012.
  32. ^ "Benjamin Franklin Award - Bioinformatics.org". www.bioinformatics.org. Retrieved 7 February 2017.

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Michael_Eisen&oldid=1218414205"