George Church

George Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, head of Synthetic Biology at Harvard's Weiss Institute, and Director of PersonalGenomes.org, which provides open-access information on human Genomic, Environmental & Trait data (GET). He received his PhD from Harvard in 1984.

He has contributed to many DNA sequencing methods and companies, including CGI-BGI, Life, Illumina, and Nanopore. He is director of an IARPA BRAIN Project and NIH Center for Excellence in Genomic Science. His honors include election to NAS & NAE & Franklin Bower Laureate for Achievement in Science. He has coauthored 453 papers, 105 patent publications, and one book, Regenesis..

In addition to his writing, Church was involved in the genesis of the Human Genome Project in 1984, Personal Genome Project in 2005 and has helped found over 30 startups. Church's PhD developed methods for direct genome sequencing, multiplexing and barcoding which directly led to the first genome sequence in 1994.

Church has been involved in a large number of companies and institutions in his career, acting in a range of roles such as scientist, professor, founder and advisor. In addition to the companies he has co-founded, he currently serves as an advisor to a diverse range of companies, spanning fields from biochemistry and genealogy to emerging sectors in biotechnology such as Frontier Bio, Flagship Ventures, 23andMe, Good Start Genetics, Genia and Genome Compiler Corp.