Jakob Heinz

Harvard University

Jakob Heinz is a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics program at Harvard University, co-advised by Dr. Heng Li and Dr. Matthew Meyerson. His research uses recently resolved centromere sequences assembled by the Human Pangenome Research Consortium to develop computational methods for identifying novel centromere fusion events in cancer genomes and studying their recurrence across diverse cancer types. In his free time, Jakob enjoys playing chess, tennis, hiking, reading, and learning yoga.

Conference

JXTX+CSHL Biology of Genomes 2026

Research Focus

• Centromere genomics
• Cancer genome analysis
• Computational methods for centromere fusion event identification
• Human Pangenome Research Consortium