George Church

Dr. George McDonald Church is an American geneticist, molecular engineer, chemist, and entrepreneur.

In April 2017, Church was included on Time's annual list of 100 most influential people in the world. Stephen Colbert wrote a glowing tribute to him to mark the occasion.^{1) 2)}

Church was partly funded from 2005 to 2007 by the nonprofit Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, a private foundation established by Jeffrey Epstein.³⁾ In his 2019 apology for “poor awareness” of Epstein's sex offender status, Church said he had “nerd tunnel vision” and articles on Epstein's crimes were unclear to him, placing responsibility on vetting donors on the development office.⁴⁾

On October 30, 2017, Church was awarded the title of Honorary Professor at Zhejiang University.⁵⁾ After the award ceremony, Church delivered 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.

On May 1, 2018, Church co-led the second Genome Project-write (GP-write) “Scientific Working Meeting” at the Center of Excellence for Engineering Biology, where he reportedly networked with Bryan Bishop and Max Berry.^{6) 7)} In response to the pair's request for advice on their new designer baby startup, Church told them to consult with ethicists.⁸⁾

Church is a member of the Rapid Deployment Vaccine Collaborative (RaDVaC), formed in March 2020 to deploy experimental COVID-19 vaccines.⁹⁾

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