Dr. George Church is professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School; director of the Lipper Center for Computational Genetics, DOE Genomes to Life Center, NIH Center for Excellence in Genomic Science, and the Personal Genome Project; as well as member of the Wyss Institute and Broad Institute. He pioneered the first direct genomic sequencing method, which led to the first commercial genome sequence, and to second-generation sequencing – e.g. open-source Polonator.org. Dr. Church has 34 patents including molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers. He has advised 24 companies, including founding LS9, JouleBio, and Knome.

In 1998, Dr. Thomson’s isolation of human embryonic stem cells created a new field of study and changed how people think of treating diseases. In addition to his roles at CDI, Dr. Thomson is the Director of Regenerative Biology at the Morgridge Institute for Research and the John D. MacArthur Professor of Anatomy at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He is a member of The National Academy of Sciences. His seminal work on stem cell isolation received many awards, including Science Magazine’s “Breakthrough of the Year” in 1999, and he was the cover feature in TIME Magazine’s “America’s Best in Science and Medicine” in 2001. In November 2007, Dr. Thomson published another groundbreaking paper describing how differentiated cells can be reprogrammed into a pluripotent state. This isolation of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells was listed among the most significant scientific advances of 2007 in Science, Nature, TIME, NBC News, USA Today, The Independent, and Wired Magazine, and Dr. Thomson was named one of TIME Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World” this same year. Dr. Thomson has published over 112 scientific, peer-reviewed papers and been an inventor on 14 issued patents. Dr. Thomson received his VMD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.