Research and Career
With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984 and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 while he was a Research Scientist at newly formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing & software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, Helicobacter pylori) in 1994.
He initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) in 2005, and, in 2007, he founded the U.S. personal genomics company Knome (with Jorge Conde and Sundar Subramaniam). He does research on synthetic biology and is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard & MIT and director of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard.
He has been advisor to 22 companies, co-founding (with Joseph Jacobson, Jay Keasling, and Drew Endy) Codon Devices, a biotech startup dedicated to synthetic biology, which produces DNA sequences to order. With Chris Somerville, Jay Keasling, Noubar Afeyan, and David Berry he founded LS9, which is focused on biofuels or renewable petroleum technologies.
In 2009 he founded Pathogenica, with Yemi Adesokan, in order to pioneer commercial applications for pathogen sequencing technology.
In September 2010, Dr. Church was honored for his work in Genetics with the Mass High Tech All-Star Award. He is a senior editor for Molecular Systems Biology.
In 2011 he was awarded the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science of the Franklin Institute and elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2012, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
He has authored and co-authored more than 270 publications and 50 patents.
According to Forbes, Church suffers from narcolepsy.
In October 2012, he published a book that he wrote with Ed Regis titled: Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.
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