The UC Santa Cruz Genomics Institute was formally organized in 2014 by Dr. David Haussler, whose involvement in the Human Genome Project helped build UC Santa Cruz's strength in sequencing, analyzing, and displaying huge volumes of data.
UC Santa Cruz posted the first human genome sequence on the internet on July 7, 2000, to make it freely available to the public.
[3] This tool, and other browsers that UC Santa Cruz has created over the last two decades, continue to be maintained by the Genomics Institute.
These include Treehouse Childhood Cancer Initiative, the UCSC Center for Live Cell Genomics, the BRCA Exchange for breast cancer, and a pathogen genomics team that has provided tools used by the CDC and other health organizations to track the mutations and spread of the COVID-19 virus.
It frequently engages in collaborations with industry partners, some of which have included Google Health and Amazon Web Services.