World-Renowned Geneticist George Church Named Honorary Professor by ZJU

George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, was awarded the title of Honorary Professor of Zhejiang University on October 30.

After the awarding ceremony, Professor Church was invited to deliver a keynote speech titled “Technologies for Reading & Editing DNA and Medical Applications” at Xinglin Forum, a high-level academic activity hosted by ZJU’s School of Medicine.

Professor Church’s speech was greeted by waves of applause among the audience. He introduced several significant research findings in the domains of genome sequencing, genome editing and synthetic biology. He also talked about the Human Genome Project, anti-aging gene therapy, and editing the pig genome so as to sweep away barriers to transplanting swine organs into humans.

As a world-renowned geneticist, Professor Church developed the first direct genomic sequencing method and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984. He is responsible for inventing the concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags, homologous recombination methods, and DNA array synthesizers.

After completion of the Human Genome Project, Professor Church initiated the Personal Genome Project in 2005. He is now director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard and MIT and director of the National Institutes of Health Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard and MIT. He has coauthored over 100 patent publications & one book (Regenesis).