J. Craig Venter, Ph.D.
President and Chief Scientific Officer
Celera Genomics

J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. is the President and Chief Scientific Officer of Celera Genomics Corporation and the Founder, Chairman of the Board and former President of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), a not-for-profit genomics research institution.

Between 1984 and the formation of TIGR in 1992, Dr. Venter was a Section Chief, and a Lab Chief, in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In 1990, he developed expressed sequence tags (ESTs), a new strategy for gene discovery that has revolutionized the biological sciences. Over 72% of all accessions in the public database GenBank are ESTs from a wide range of species including human, plants and microbes. Using the EST method Dr. Venter and the scientists at TIGR have discovered and published over one half of all human genes. Out of new algorithms developed to deal with 100,000's of sequences TIGR developed the whole genome shotgun method that led to TIGR completing the first 3 genomes in history and a total of 20 to date.

In May of 1998, Dr. Venter and Perkin-Elmer (now known as Applera) announced the formation of Celera Genomics. Celera's goal is to become the definitive source of genomic and medical information thereby facilitating a new generation of advances in molecular medicine. Celera is building the expertise and information that will enable scientists to transform the way in which human and health problems are diagnosed and treated. On June 26, 2000, Celera announced that it had completed the first assembly of the human genome, which has revealed a total of 3.12 billion base pairs in the human genome. On February 16, 2001, Celera's manuscript on the sequencing of the human genome will be published in Science Magazine. 

Dr. Venter has published more than 160 research articles and is one of the most cited scientists in biology and medicine. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2000 King Faisal Award in Science and was recently selected as a runner up for TIME Magazine's Man of the Year and was selected as Man of the Year for the Financial Times. In addition to receiving honorary degrees for his pioneering work, he has been elected a Fellow of several societies including the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Microbiology. He received his Ph.D. in Physiology and Pharmacology from the University of California, San Diego.