James Taylor

James Taylor was an American computational biology and genomics researcher at Johns Hopkins University. He died on April 2, 2020 at age 40.¹⁾ His widow is Meredith Greif.

Taylor earned his Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of Vermont in 2000 and his PhD in computer science in 2006 from Pennsylvania State University, where he was involved in several vertebrate genome projects and the ENCODE Project. Before arriving at Johns Hopkins, he was an associate professor in the departments of Biology and of Mathematics and Computer Science at Emory University from 2008 until 2013.

Taylor held appointments at the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, arriving in the Department of Biology in 2014.

His research focused on understanding genomic and epigenomic regulation of gene transcription through integrated analysis, with the goal of achieving a complete understanding of the structure and function of genomes. He also developed a strategy to support the health of the Chesapeake Bay by detecting microorganisms in the Baltimore Harbor and monitoring their levels continuously using newly developed, portable, and rapid DNA sequencing technologies.

Taylor was a member of the Science Gateways Institute Steering Committee, and had been a member of the National Center for Genome Analysis Scientific Advisory Board from 2014 to 2016; a member of the iPlant Scientific Advisory Board from 2013 to 2016; a member of the XSEDE Project User Advisory Committee from 2012 to 2014; and co-chair of the International Arabadopsis Informatics Consortium Engineering, Architecture and Infrastructure Working Group in 2011.