2003 ADLM Lectureship Award
J. Craig Venter, PhD, is the president of three newly formed organizations: The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) Center for the Advancement of Genomics, the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, and the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation.
He has played a leading role in sequencing and analyzing the human genome.
In 1992 he founded TIGR, where his team decoded the genome of the first free-living organism. This work was based on a concept using expressed sequence tags that he developed while working at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
In 1998 he founded Celera Genomics. There his work, which featured his “shotgun sequencing” technique to accelerate sequencing, new mathematical algorithms, and automated DNA sequencing machines, culminated in the publication of the human genome in the journal Science in 2001.
He has published more than 225 research articles and is among the most frequently cited scientists in biology and medicine.