George Church

George Church

Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School; Faculty Wyss Institute; Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT; prolific company founder

George Church is Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard and MIT. He is Director of the U.S. DoE Technology Center and was Director of three NIH Centers of Excellence in Genomic Science 2004-2020. Dr. Church has received the 2011 Bower Award for Achievement in Science from the Franklin Institute, and he has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and Engineering. At the Wyss Institute at Harvard, Dr. Church leads Synthetic Biology and oversees the directed evolution of molecules, polymers, and whole genomes to create new tools with applications in regenerative medicine, new materials and imaging. He helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 and the BRAIN Initiative in 2011.

George invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and barcode tags, nanopores, multiplex genome editing, and array DNA synthesizers. His innovations have been the basis of over 40 biotechnology companies. 

Dr. Church said: “I am delighted to join the advisory board of Copernicus, which is merging exponentials in synthetic biology with nanogram-scale space-probe technology for a novel exploration venture.”