George Church, Harvard University professor and genomics pioneer, became a scientific advisor to a biotech company for the first time in 1979 when he was still a PhD student at Harvard. Biorad-Sadtler was trying to develop a general purpose scanner of gel electrophoretic autoradiogram films, and asked Church to discuss the DNA sequencing software he had just written.
Over the next several years, his career blossomed. Church completed the first direct genomic sequencing method, helped launch the Human Genome Project and licensed a slew of technologies during the 1980-1990 biotech boom. In many cases, that technology created a biotech, and he joined another scientific advisory board. Despite his hectic schedule - maintaining a Harvard lab, mentoring students from four universities, and sitting on 11 biotech advisory boards - Church says the extra work is worth it. There's "an obligation for scientists to get things out of the ivory tower," he ...
