George Church

George Church is a Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT. He leads Synthetic Biology at Harvard’s Wyss Institute, where he oversees the directed evolution of molecules, polymers, and whole genomes to create new tools with applications in regenerative medicine and bio-production of chemicals. Professor Church is widely recognized for his innovative contributions to genomic science and his many pioneering contributions to chemistry and biomedicine. In 1984, he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method, which resulted in the first genome sequence (the human pathogen, H. pylori). He later helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the Personal Genome Project in 2005. Professor Church invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and array DNA synthesizers. His innovations have been the basis for many companies including Editas (Gene therapy); Gen9bio (Synthetic DNA); and Veritas Genetics (full human genome sequencing).