Jonathan M. Rothberg - Education and Scientific Career

Education and Scientific Career

Rothberg earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering with an option in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA in 1985. After completing college at Carnegie Mellon, Jonathan went on to attend Yale University and earn a M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in biology. His thesis at Yale focused on decoding a gene called slit responsible for wiring the nervous system. Jonathan's thesis work resulted in publication of a cover article slit: An EGF-Homologous Locus of D. melanogaster Involved in the Development of the Embryonic Central Nervous System in the journal Cell. While a graduate student at Yale Jonathan founded CuraGen, one of the first genomics companies (CellDex Therapeutics acquired CuraGen in fall of 2009). At CuraGen, Jonathan and his team focused on how the proteins encoded in a genome function together, and published the first global proteomic maps of a eukaryotic cell and a metazoan organism (featured on the covers of Nature and Science) and developed drugs for the treatment of metastatic skin and breast cancer.

Rothberg brought to market the first next-generation sequencer and has been a pioneering entrepreneur in the field of massively parallel DNA sequencing. He founded 454 Life Sciences Corporation, later acquired by Roche Diagnostics, and Ion Torrent, companies that have commercialized technologies for DNA sequencing that have significantly reduced the cost of sequencing a genome. His team at 454 Life Sciences and the Baylor College of Medicine Genome Center was the first to complete and make public the sequence of an individual human genome (James D. Watson). Published in Nature magazine, that genome was made publicly on GeneBank and browsable via the efforts of Lincoln Stein's group contributing significantly to the new field of personal genomics. Rothberg also initiated the Neanderthal Genome Project in collaboration with Svante Pääbo's group.

Under his tenure, 454 Life Sciences worked with collaborators to crack the mystery behind the disappearance of the honey bee, uncover a new virus killing transplant patients, and elucidate the extent of individual human variation—work recognized by Science magazine as the breakthrough of the year for 2007. The collective work of Dr. Rothberg's team, their collaborators and ultimately their customers, included projects as diverse as uncovering the complexity of life in the World's oceans and sequencing the extinct wooly mammoth.

The New England Journal described Dr. Rothberg’s sequencing innovation as "The New Age of Molecular Diagnostics for Microbial Agents." Science magazine called it one of the top 10 breakthroughs for 2008. Dr. Rothberg has appeared on CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg TV for his pioneering work in the field of genomic medicine, has been featured on the cover of Fortune magazine, and his scientific work has been featured on the covers of leading scientific journals including Cell, Science, and Nature. His contribution to sequencing, include both the first non-bacterial cloning systems (cloning by limited dilution), as well as the first massively parallel DNA sequencing method (sequencing by synthesis on a single substrate in parallel), concepts that have formed the basis for all subsequence next generation sequencing technologies.

Rothberg is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Connecticut Academy of Medical Science and Engineering, and is a life of trustees of Carnegie Mellon University.