George Church, PhD
Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics
Department of Genetics
Harvard Medical School & MIT Health Sciences and Technology
Biography
George Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, Director of PersonalGenomes.org, providing the world's only open-access information on human Genomic, Environmental & Trait data (GET). His 1984 Harvard PhD included the first methods for direct genome sequencing, molecular multiplexing & barcoding. These lead to the first commercial genome sequence (pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994 . His innovations in essentially all of the "next generation" genome sequencing (CGI, Life, Illumina, nanopore) methods and companies & oligo synthesis plus cell/tissue engineering resulted in founding additional application-based companies spanning fields of medical diagnostics (Knome, Alacris, AbVitro, Pathogenica) & synthetic biology / therapeutics (LS9, Joule, Gen9, Editas, Egenesis, WarpDrive) as well as new privacy, biosafety & biosecurity policies. He is director of the NIH Center for Excellence in Genomic Science. His honors include election to NAS & NAE & Franklin Bower Laureate for Achievement in Science. He has coauthored 330 papers, 60 patents & one book (Regenesis).