People

Jason Bobe

Jason Bobe serves as the Director of Community for the Personal Genome Project based out of George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School. The Personal Genome Project seeks to encourage the thoughtful development of personal genomics technology and practices by building frameworks for prototyping and evaluation at increasing scales. Jason also is a co-founder of DIYbio.org, an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists and amateur biologists. DIYbio is fast becoming the organizational hub for amateur biologists worldwide, uniting the movement’s participants through its website, online forums, blog and local chapters. Jason has also worked as a Business Development Consultant for OpenWetWare.org, as Director of Business Development at DNA Direct, and as an independent consultant. He has attended both the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

George M. Church

Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for Computational Genetics. 1984 Harvard PhD included the first direct genomic sequencing method, molecular multiplexing tags, which lead to automation & software used at Genome Therapeutics Corp. for the first commercial genome sequence -- pathogen, Helicobacter in 1994. This multiplex solid-phase sequencing evolved into polonies (1999), ABI-SOLiD (2005) & open-source Polonator.org (2007). Innovations in homologous recombination and array-based DNA reading & writing lead to current research and new ethics/safety strategies in Personal Genomics (PGP, 23andme, Knome) & synthetic biology (Codon Devices, SynBERC, LS9).

Rob Knight

Rob Knight is an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in 2001 working with Laura Landweber at Princeton University, did postdoctoral work with Mike Yarus at the University of Colorado, and joined the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department in 2004 as the first hire made by the Colorado Initiative in Molecular Biotechnology. His research includes studies of the relationships among RNA sequence, structure and function, and studies of microbial communities in different habitats, including the human microbiome. His lab is part of the Human Microbiome Project Data Analysis and Coordination Center, and he was recently selected for an HHMI Early Career Scientist Award.

Advisors

John S. Brownstein

Dr. Brownstein is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Computational Epidemiology Group at the Children's Hospital Boston Informatics Program of the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences. Dr. Brownstein’s research interests are in the development of methods and applications in public health informatics. This research has focused on a variety of infectious disease systems including malaria, HIV, dengue, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, and influenza. He is also leading the development several novel disease surveillance systems, including HealthMap.org, an internet-based global infectious disease intelligence system funded by Google.org. The system is currently in use by the CDC, WHO, DHS, DOD, HHS, EU among others. Dr. Brownstein has advised the World Health Organization, Institute of Medicine, the US Departments of Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, and the White House on real-time public health surveillance.

Yemi Adesokan

Yemi Adesokan is currently Research Fellow in Genetics in the lab of George Church at Harvard Medical School and an associate of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He obtained an undergraduate degree in Biology in 2001 from the University of Houston where as an undergraduate researcher he predicted the first HIV-Integrase/Viral DNA binding pattern. As part of his doctoral thesis in theoretical chemistry at the University of California, Irvine and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yemi worked on the development of new force-fields for biomolecular modeling. With George Church, he spearheads the genomic centers of excellence program which includes the multi-drug resistant TB analysis and capacity building initiatives funded recently by a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Exploration grant. Yemi co-directs with George Church, the NIH Funded CEGS-MAP Initiative at Harvard Medical School and is a Fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

Rye Barcott

While an undergraduate at UNC in 2001, Rye Barcott founded Carolina For Kibera (CFK) in Kenya with Salim Mohamed and the late Tabitha Atieno Festo, who each shared the conviction that the poor have the solutions to the problems they face. Named a Time Magazine and Gates Foundation “Hero of Global Health,” CFK fights poverty and promotes ethnic and religious reconciliation through a unique model of participatory development. Barcott served on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps for five years and is currently a joint MPA and MBA candidate at Harvard University, where he is a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow. He is a member of the Harvard Endowment’s Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, the UNC NROTC Board of Directors, and the World Learning Board of Trustees. In 2006 ABC World News named Barcott a “Person of the Year.” In 2009, he was named as one of forty TED Global Fellows.