Karen Miga

Karen Elizabeth Hayden Miga is an American genomics expert who leads the Telomere-to-Telomore (T2T) consortium that seeks to fully complete the assembly of the human genome. She serves as an Assistant Research Scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She was named as "One to Watch" in the 2020 Nature's 10.
Early life and education.
Miga studied biological sciences at the University of Tennessee. She moved to Case Western Reserve University for her graduate studies, where she earned a master's degree in 2004. She completed field work at la Station d'Étude des Gorilles et des Chimpanzés. After earning her master's degree, Miga moved to Duke University, where she worked in genetics and genomics. Her doctoral research was supervised by Huntington Willard. She worked with Eran Segal at the Weizmann Institute of Science.
Research and career.
In 2012, Miga joined the laboratory of David Haussler at the University of California, Santa Cruz. At UCSC she combined computational and experimental approaches. There she leads the telomere-to-telomere (T2T) consortium, a community based effort that seeks to fully sequence and assemble the human genome. Her research efforts make use of long-read sequencing strategies. She makes use of the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION sequencer, which analyses DNA by detecting changes in current flow when DNA passes through nanopores in a membrane.
Miga leads the Human Pangenome Production Center that seeks to contribute to the next human pangenome reference map through the creation of 350 T2T diploid genomes. This map will support the development of personalised therapeutics. In 2020 Miga was named as "One to Watch" in the 2020 Nature's 10.