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Bob Handsaker is a senior principal software engineer working under the direction of Steve McCarroll in the at the Ó³»­´«Ã½ of MIT and Harvard. He is the principal author of , a suite of software analysis methods for the discovery and analysis of structural variation/copy number variation from sequencing data.

Handsaker’s research focuses on genome structural variation, large scale changes in a person’s DNA that rearrange genes or lead to an increase or decrease in the number of copies of a gene in different individuals. Handsaker develops new computational methods to accurately characterize and measure these complex variants, to understand their distribution and evolutionary history in the human population, and to elucidate their contributions to many diverse human diseases.

Prior to joining the Ó³»­´«Ã½, Handsaker worked as a software architect/developer and technology consultant. He has been affiliated with the Ó³»­´«Ã½ and the Whitehead Institute Center for Genome Research since 2002, joining the Ó³»­´«Ã½ full time in 2010. He was awarded the Ó³»­´«Ã½â€™s Excellence Award in Science/Engineering in 2014.

Handsaker holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from MIT.