Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> September 13, 2002
DR. JONATHAN ROTHBERG is the founder, Chairman, CEO and President of
CuraGen Corporation, a genomics-based pharmaceutical company
headquartered in New Haven, CT. He founded CuraGen in 1993 at the
intersection of information technology and molecular biology to manage
the vast amount of information being generated by the Human Genome
Project. Dr. Rothberg's vision was to develop technologies to
industrialize the drug discovery and development process and
systematically mine the genome to develop novel, genomics-based
pharmaceutical products to treat unmet medical needs. From 1991 to 1993,
Dr. Rothberg served as a postdoctoral Fellow at the Howard Hughes
Medical Institute's Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine. Dr. Rothberg
earned a BS in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and
a MS, M. Phil. and PhD in Biology from Yale University. Since founding
CuraGen, Dr. Rothberg has grown the company into one of the industry's
largest genomics-based pharmaceutical companies, employing nearly 500
people. Expanding on his vision for the future of life sciences, Dr.
Rothberg recently has established two new innovative organizations. In
June 2000, he founded 454 Corporation, a majority-owned subsidiary of
CuraGen and a pre-IPO biotechnology startup spearheading the development
of revolutionary technologies that enable massive scale genome analysis.
In the fall of 2001, Dr. Rothberg founded The Rothberg Institute for
Childhood Diseases, a non-profit research institute dedicated to
discovering cures for childhood orphan diseases. The Institute leverages
distributed computing power to screen drug targets in silico and funds
the 'wet science' validation of these in silico discoveries at the
Institute's own research center and through alliances with Yale, Harvard
and the Chase Cancer Center. Currently, with more than 3,000 users, the
distributed research effort has more computing power than the largest
biotech companies and, in less than one year, has identified four drug
leads. As a result of his work and accomplishments, Dr. Rothberg was
named an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and was a recipient of
The Irvington Institute's Corporate Leadership Award in Science. He is
the author of numerous publications and has been issued a number of
patents covering his scientific inventions. Profile
Can you briefly tell us about your company, its evolution and where you
are now?
Dr. Rothberg: CuraGen was born out of
