George Church

Dr. George M. Church is a world-renowned geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, and the Co-Director of SeedLabs. He is currently the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at both Harvard and MIT. George was a founding member of Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and serves as Director of the U.S. Department of Energy Technology Center, the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science, and an IARPA BRAIN Project.

Dr. Church pioneered the specialized fields of personal genomics, synthetic biology, and genome engineering; his groundbreaking 1984 dissertation at Harvard introduced the first methods for direct genome sequencing, molecular multiplexing, and barcoding. These innovations led to the first ever full genome sequence in 1994, a landmark contribution that launched a new generation of DNA sequencing methods. He has co-founded several application-based companies spanning the field of genetic sequencing, medical diagnostics, and synthetic biology and therapeutics, with groundbreaking research in chip-DNA-synthesis, gene editing, and stem cell engineering.

In 2015, Dr. Church and his team successfully copied woolly mammoth genes using the CRISPR DNA editing technique, splicing genetic segments from a frozen mammoth into the DNA of a modern elephant, marking the first time a mammoth’s genes were functionally active since the species became extinct. Dr. Church has received numerous awards including the 2011 Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute and election to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering. He has co-authored 453 papers, 105 patent publications & one book. In 2017, he was listed as one of the 100 Most Influential People by Time Magazine.