Shankar Balasubramanian

Sir Shankar is Founder of two companies and the principal inventor of the leading next generation human genome sequencing technology core to all Illumina sequencing platforms, estimated to be worth >$30BN.

Sir Shankar’s technology has made routine, accurate, low-cost sequencing of human genomes a reality, has revolutionised biology and accelerated the development of genomic personalised medicine.

Sir Shankar is the Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. His awards include the Royal Medal (2018), the RoyalSociety Mullard Award (2009), The BBSRC Innovator of the year (2010) and the Tetrahedron Prize (2013). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences and a member of EMBO.