Leonard Lipovich, a proud graduate of Stuyvesant High School, New York City, earned his B.A. (cum laude) in Genetics and Development from Cornell University in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Genome Sciences from the University of Washington, where Mary-Claire King was his dissertation advisor, in 2003. After postdoctoral training at the Genome Institute of Singapore, he joined Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan in 2007 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2013. In 2014, Dr. Lipovich received the NIH Director's New Innovator Award. He studies long non-coding RNA genes in human cancer and type 2 diabetes. His specific interest is to investigate, using Genome-Wide Association Studies and high-throughput functional genomics approaches, how primate-specific lncRNAs directly contribute to these human diseases. Dr. Lipovich is a funded CHARGE Consortium co-investigator and serves on the NIH Accelerating Medicines Partnership T2D Coordination Committee. His goal is to improve human health through personalized, lncRNA-targeted post-genomic therapeutics.