This podcast originally aired on May 25th, 2011
Sponsored by: BioConference Live
Guest: Church George, PhD, Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences & Technology, Harvard and MIT. Bio and Contact Info
Part I-Personalized Medicine
Listen (20:24)
Part II-Synthetic Biology Listen (19:04)
Part III-Personal Anecdotes Listen (06:54)
Our guest for the hour is Dr. George Church from Harvard. Dr. Church’s accomplishments are legendary among scientists in his field and beyond. His Ph.D. from Harvard in biochemistry and molecular biology with Wally Gilbert included the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984. In 1994, the technology transfer of automated sequencing and software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence (the human pathogen, H. pylori). He was then involved in initiating the Human Genome Project as a Research Scientist at Biogen Inc. In 2006 he initiated the Personal Genome Project with the aim of advancing the field of Personalized Medicine. He invented the broadly-applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and array DNA synthesizers. He has served in advisory roles for 12 journals and 5 granting agencies and also been involved in 22 private companies including LS9-which focuses on bio-petroleum, and Knome who provides full human genome sequencing. Current research focuses on integrating biosystems-modeling with personal genomics and synthetic biology.
