Bio:

Dr. Boeke is the founding director of the Institute for Systems Genetics at NYU Langone Health, and known for foundational work on mechanistic and genomic aspects of retrotransposition, a major mechanism by which genetic information moves inside the genomes of humans and other organisms. He is a pioneer of synthetic genome construction, having synthesized the first artificial yeast chromosomes de novo, and leads the international consortium that built Yeast 2.0 genome, with 17 synthetic chromosomes built to a common design, and invented genome scramblingUsing Big DNA technology to build mammalian gene loci in yeast and then delivering those loci and their variants to stem cells, Dr. Boeke and team are working to understand specify how human genes are expressed in the context of the “Dark Matter Project”, launched in 2018. This research has led to technology that enables rapid design and development of humanized mouse models for studying treatment of diseases, among other applications. Boeke founded several biotechnology companies, including Avigen Inc., CDI Labs, and Neochromosome, Inc. His lab developed a highly automated RT-PCR workflow and software infrastructure central to a COVID testing pipeline deployed by another company cofounded with Jon Badal of Opentrons in 2020, the Pandemic Response Lab, which performed 11 million COVID-19 tests in NYC and other locations. His academic training was at Bowdoin College (A.B. in Biochemistry 1976; D.Sc. 1998). His doctoral work with Peter Model and Norton Zinder was carried out at Rockefeller University (Ph.D. in Molecular Biology, 1982) and he performed postdoctoral work with Gerald Fink at the Whitehead Institute (1982-1985), where he first defined retrotransposition. Dr. Boeke is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology and the National Academy of Inventors.