<p>(1954[[Image:George- ) is an American molecular geneticist.&nbsp;He is perhaps one of the most influential scientist in genomics if not the mostChurch.jpg]]<br />

(1954- ) is an American molecular geneticist.&nbsp;He is perhaps one of the most influential scientist in genomics if not the most.<br /><br />He is currently Professor of Genetics <sup class="reference" id="_ref-0" class="reference">[1]</sup> at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Sciences &amp; Technology <sup class="reference" id="_ref-HST_0" class="reference">[2]</sup> at Harvard and MIT. With Walter Gilbert he developed the first direct genomic sequencing method in 1984<sup class="reference" id="_ref-1" class="reference">[3]</sup> and helped initiate the Human Genome Project in 1984 <sup class="reference" id="_ref-2" class="reference">[4]</sup> while he was a Research Scientist at newly-formed Biogen Inc. He invented the broadly-applied concepts of molecular multiplexing and tags<sup class="reference" id="_ref-3" class="reference">[5]</sup>, homologous recombination methods <sup class="reference" id="_ref-4" class="reference">[6]</sup>, and DNA array synthesizers. Technology transfer of automated sequencing &amp; software to Genome Therapeutics Corp. resulted in the first commercial genome sequence, (the human pathogen, <em>Helicobacter pylori</em>) in 1994 <sup class="reference" id="_ref-NG_0" class="reference">[7]</sup>. He initiated the Personal Genome Project (PGP) <sup class="reference" id="_ref-5" class="reference">[8]</sup> in 2005 and research on synthetic biology. He is director of the U.S. Department of Energy Center on Bioenergy at Harvard &amp; MIT <sup class="reference" id="_ref-6" class="reference">[9]</sup> and director of the National Institutes of Health (NHGRI) Center of Excellence in Genomic Science at Harvard, MIT &amp; Washington University <sup class="reference" id="_ref-7" class="reference">[10]</sup>. He has been advisor to 22 companies, most recently co-founding (with Joseph Jacobson, Jay Keasling, and Drew Endy) Codon Devices, a biotech startup dedicated to synthetic biology<sup class="reference" id="_ref-8" class="reference">[11]</sup> and (with Chris Somerville) founding LS9, which is focused on biofuels <sup class="reference" id="_ref-9" class="reference">[12]</sup>. He is a senior editor for Nature EMBO Molecular Systems Biology.&nbsp;<br />