 The word genomics was first coined in 1986 and first appeared in the scientific literature in 1987. Meanwhile, I graduated from a combined MD-PhD program in 1987 and spent the prior year deciding what clinical specialty to train in following my graduation. I thus became aware of this new field of genomics at the exact time that I had to make a major decision about my professional pursuits. The excitement around the new technologies for analyzing DNA, including the invention of the polymerase chain reaction or PCR a few years earlier, and the really cool advances in DNA sequencing happening at that time was fueling the growing interest in the young field of genomics and profoundly influenced my choice of clinical training. I became very excited about the opportunities for having the analysis of a patient's genome become a part of their clinical care. Although back in 1986 or 1987, I really didn't have any serious idea what any of that would ultimately look like. But those thoughts influenced me greatly. And so I made the decision to pursue clinical training in laboratory medicine, otherwise known as clinical pathology, because that was where DNA diagnostics was finding its home. Then during my first year of clinical training, specifically in early 1988, I needed to identify a laboratory to join for postdoctoral research training as part of my residency. And there, I consciously gravitated towards research labs that were beginning to build the then new field of genomics. At that point in time, the Human Genome Project was being actively discussed and debated. And while the project was controversial, with some actually forcefully arguing that it was a terrible idea, I found the notion of completely reading out and ordering all the letters in human DNA to be a profoundly compelling and inspiring idea. That is why I chose to do my postdoctoral research training in the laboratory in Maynard Olson, who was a true pioneer in the young field of genomics and a key architect of the Human Genome Project. Two years after joining Maynard's lab, I had the opportunity to start working on the Human Genome Project on day one and never look back, working on the project from beginning to end and dedicating my entire professional career to genomics.