For more than fifteen years, Jan Dvorak has led the effort to physically map and sequence the Ae. tauschii genome. Long before the start of the IWGSC, Jan pioneered physical mapping in wheat and his groundbreaking work resulted in a paradigm shift for high quality sequencing of complex genomes. Jan also served as a co-chair of the IWGSC for ten years.

Jan Dvorak is Professor at the University of California, Davis, in the United States. In his laboratory, research focuses on the development of genome sequencing technologies for plant genomes, in particular large genomes of the Triticeae family. The knowledge is employed to address fundamental questions of plant genome evolution, such as the meaning of genome size variation, gene distribution along chromosomes, and the role of recombination in the evolution of genome structure. Jan’s principal research interest is on plant structural genomics, focusing on physical mapping, genome sequencing, and the development of marker technologies for plant breeding and genetics.