George Church

Church was born on August 28, 1954, on MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, and grew up in nearby Clearwater, Florida. He attended high school at the preparatory boarding school Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, from 1968 to 1972. He then attended Duke University, where he obtained a B.S. degree in zoology and chemistry in two years.

In the fall of 1973, Church began research work at Duke University with assistant professor of biochemistry Sung-Hou Kim, work that continued a year later in a graduate biochemistry program at Duke on an National Science Foundation fellowship.

As Peter Miller reported on Church for the National Geographic series, "The Innovators":

As a graduate student at Duke ... he used x-ray crystallography to study the three-dimensional structure of "transfer" RNA, which decodes DNA and carries instructions to other parts of the cell. It was groundbreaking research, but Church spent so much time in the lab—up to a hundred hours a week—that he neglected his other classes [in the fall of 1975].

As a result, Church was not compliant with Duke graduate academic policies, and was withdrawn from the degree program in January 1976. He was told that "[We] hope that whatever problems ... contributed to your lack of success ... at Duke will not keep you from a successful pursuit of a productive career." The work gave rise to publications including a PNAS report with Church as lead author on an early model for molecular interactions between the minor groove of double-stranded DNA and β-ribbons of proteins.

Church returned to graduate work at Harvard University in 1977 under Walter Gilbert, and completed a Ph.D in biochemistry and molecular biology working on mobile genetic elements within introns of yeast mitochondrial and mouse immunoglobulin genes (1984).

After completing his doctoral work, Church spent six months of 1984 at Biogen, the industrial laboratory site where Gilbert had relocated a sizable part of his former Harvard group. This was followed soon after by a Life Sciences Research Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco with Gail R. Martin, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and joint-discoverer of a technique to extract mouse embryonic stem cells.

Church joined the Harvard Medical School faculty as an assistant professor in 1986. Church is now the Robert Winthrop Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, and a member of the Harvard-MIT health sciences and technology faculty. He was also a founding member of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. He served as the director of the Center of Excellence in Genomic Science (CEGS) at the Harvard Medical School, funded by a P50-type award from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a part of the National Institutes of Health.

He co-founded Veritas Genetics and its European and Latin American subsidiary, Veritas Intercontinental, with the idea of bringing the benefits of genomic data to millions of people globally.

Church was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012 for contributions to human genome sequencing technologies and DNA synthesis and assembly.

In 2018, Church co-founded Nebula Genomics, a personal genomics company that offers a whole-genome sequencing service. The company says that it is developing its own blockchain, intending to provide free sequencing in exchange for users' genomic and personal data. The decentralized nature of a blockchain also has the potential to improve aspects of data privacy and security, but identification of individuals could still be possible (DNA itself is a unique identifier) and law enforcement could still issue search warrants or subpoena the data.

In 2021, Church joined as a co-founder of HLTH.network (formerly Shivom), a healthcare blockchain startup which created the world's first global genomics data sharing and analytics marketplace. …

In his science and popular efforts, Church has promoted open access genome sequencing and shareable human medical data, as well as online, open education and citizen science.

Church authored the 2012 New Scientist's "top science book", Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves with Ed Regis. He has participated in news interviews and videos including at TED, TEDx, and TEDMED venues, at PBS's Charlie Rose, Faces of America, and NOVA, as well as at PopSci, EG, and The Colbert Report. He is a regular contributor to Edge.org publications and videos and is a member of the Xconomists, an ad hoc team of editorial advisors for the tech news and media company, Xconomy.

In 2015, Jeneen Interlandi wrote an article on Church for Popular Science titled "The Church Of George Church: From reviving extinct species to hunting for dark matter, can a single scientist transform biology—and our lives?", where she states:

Like an engineer, he (George Church) tends to see the universe not as a disparate set of mysteries but as a machine with a vast array of buttons and levers, each begging to be pushed and pulled.

Church has received accolades including election to the National Academy of Sciences (in 2011), and the National Academy of Engineering (in 2012). He received the American Society for Microbiology Promega Biotechnology Research Award and the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science of the Franklin Institute. He authored the NewScientist "top science book", Regenesis (on synthetic biology) with Ed Regis.

Other honors include the Triennial International Steven Hoogendijk Award in 2010 and the Scientific American Top 50 twice (for "Designing artificial life" in 2005 and "The $1000 genome" in 2006). Newsweek picked Church for their 2008 "Power of Ideas" recognition in the category of Medicine (for the Personal Genome Project). In September 2010, Church was honored for his work in genetics with the Mass High Tech All-Star Award.

He is a member of the Research Advisory Board of SENS Research Foundation.

Church is married to fellow Harvard Medical School faculty member in genetics Ting Wu.

Church has been outspoken in his support of following a vegan lifestyle, for reasons concerned with health, and with environmental and moral issues. When asked about his dietary choice, Church replied, "I've been vegan off-and-on since 1974 when I was inspired by participating in an MIT nutritional study, and quite strictly since 2004." He goes on to elaborate 4 reasons:

medical (cholesterol in fish & dairy), energy conservation (up to 20-fold impact), cruelty ("organic" animals are deprived of medicines that humans use), and risks of spreading pathogens (not just the flu) ... [noting that] veganism is an issue for which personal and global love of life, health and wealth align. It's a pity to lose parts of our humanity and planet just due to a lack of recipes.

George identifies as a sentientist. Sentientism is a naturalistic worldview that grants moral consideration to all sentient beings.

In the context of the Personal Genome Project, journalists at Forbes and Wired have noted Church's openness about his health issues, including dyslexia, narcolepsy, and high cholesterol (one of the motivations for his vegan diet). Church has many of his best ideas during the brief naps caused by his narcolepsy, and therefore does not treat it.

Church collaborated with transhumanist entrepreneur James Clement on the Supercentenarian Research Study, which aims to sequence the genomes of supercentenarians in hopes of discovering potential genetic factors behind their longevity. As of 2023, he is part of the Enhanced Games scientific and ethical advisory commission.