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photo of Gene Godbold with some of his family members at Thanksgiving 2018
Gene Godbold with some of his family members at Thanksgiving 2018

Since August 2017, Gene Godbold has contributed to the Functional Genomic and Computational Assessment of Threats (FunGCAT) for the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA). Working as a contractor at Signature Science, he has developed ways to assess the threat of biological sequences so they can be grasped with machine learning (https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/fun-gcat).

Gene was member of the department starting in 1989. He worked in Ann Erickson’s lab on lysosomal enzyme sorting and received the PhD in 1996. After a postdoc in the division of infectious diseases at UVA in Charlottesville studying how a protozoan parasite kills host cells, he taught college for two years in sabbatical-replacement positions.

Since 2002, he has worked for different companies doing contract research for the federal government. Most of this has been for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security with some smaller projects for the CDC. He has had the opportunity to become an expert on the function of virulence factors and antibiotic resistance proteins. He and his wife Kristen live in central Virginia. They spend their free time enjoying their eight children (seven boys, one girl). Gene notes that his oldest two were born at North Carolina Memorial when he was a graduate student and his wife was a pharmacist.