He is most widely known, however, as a pioneer of next-generation sequencing, a major advance in the speed with which a genome could be read. Dr. Rothberg is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, is a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University and an Adjunct Professor of Genetics at Yale University. During COVID, theres been an explosion of telemedicine, Rothberg said. From 1999 to 2007, Dr. Rothberg co-founded and served as Chairman of ClarifI, Inc., and from 1999 to 2006, he founded and served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer of 454 Life Sciences Corporation. He was winner of The Wall Street Journals Gold Medal for Innovation and the 2010 Connecticut Medal of Technology. Dr. Jonathan Rothberg is the Recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for inventing high-speed, "Next-Gen" DNA sequencing, the nation's highest honor for technological achievement, bestowed by the president of the United States. Jonathan Rothberg a pioneer in genetic sequencing technology, serial entrepreneur, Yale alumnus, and New Haven native will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the White House announced Dec. 22. . To microbiologists and microphysicists like Jonathan Rothberg, this means theres virtually limitless genetic information to be found in the DNA of waterborne bacteria, and the infectious agents inside of them. By the time he boarded the Gene Machine, he felt that he could not afford to tarry. Liminal enables critical brain vital signs to make brain monitoring as ubiquitous as heart monitoring. We want to make fast, accurate diagnostic testing as routine as taking your temperature and as accessible as telemedicine. Hed assumed that the people in charge would get their act together before long, but he swore to himself that he would face the next pandemic with a simple diagnostic platform of his own devising. The endeavor, which includes a popular caf named after his father and a garden named after his mother, has the feel of a personal micronation. Rothberg decided that a good way to use his talents in the pandemic response was to develop a home coronavirus test. A molecular test is the only way to test asymptomatic [people], Rothberg said, differentiating it from an antibody test which he said is used to diagnose people who already had the virus and an antigen test which he said is used to confirm a doctors diagnosis. [2] Interested in wine-making, he acquired Chamard Vineyards in nearby Clinton, CT.[2] Rothberg owns a yacht called Gene Machine, which is equipped with a lab on board, [6] and its support vessel, Gene Chaser. He developed a high-speed "Next-Gen" DNA sequencing process, motivated by the opportunity to impact the lives of the people he loves. He lifted his clunky black wraparound sunglasses up and to the side, rested them askance on the frames of his prescription pair, and gestured to his marine habitat. I had a need with my daughter. One of his latest companies, Butterfly Network, recently began. It gave us additional supporting evidence.. One luxury broker and charter operator told me that Rothberg is venerated, in the small, gossipy world of superyacht owners, as the mad scientist with his state-of-the-art lab. The broker continued, Its well known in the industry that Rothberg does his best thinking on the ship, where his mind is clear and free of distractions.. I had known from my work at Ion Torrent that if you can leverage Moore's law . In addition to founding 454 Life Sciences and Ion Torrent, Dr. Rothberg Founded CuraGen Corporation, Clarifi, RainDance Technologies, Lam Therapeutics, Quantum-Si, Hyperfine Research and Butterfly Network. But there is one thing even more prolific than microbes: the viruses that replicate inside of them. AI Therapeutics - Deep Learning Precision Medicine Husband and wife had to isolate from each other, not only because of her job, but because their daughter has a rare genetic disorder and needs to take immunosuppressive medication. This method could bring the cost of each test down to perhaps three or four dollars. He won the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from then-president Barack Obama in 2016 in the wake of two widely heralded discoveries. Guilford Biotech Pioneer Charting New Territory In His Superyacht's Lab At fifty-seven, he presides over seven sibling companies, most of which are organized around the principle of scale: he likes to take existing technologies and make them faster, smaller, cheaper, and more readily available. In another age or another society, a man of Rothbergs background and expertisenot only in science and technology but in manufacturing, logistics, and salesmight have been summoned to help organize a public solution. In the next two years, a rival startup called Illumina cornered the high-speed sequencing market. Rothbergs best thinking generates new ideas at a berserk pace, often without regard for immediate feasibility, but his ambitions are warranted by a long history of unlikely successes. Fortunately, the ship had been outfitted with Rothbergs demiurgic propensities in mind. New York was long past its peak, but the testing situation was considerably worse than it had been during the spring; there were waiting times of nine or fourteen days. The New England Journal described Dr. Rothbergs innovation as "The New Age of Molecular Diagnostics", Science magazine called it one of the top 10 breakthroughs for 2008. He is the founder of multiple health technology companies, including CuraGen, 454 Life Sciences, Ion Torrent, and more recently Butterfly Network (the worlds most accessible and fastest-selling ultrasound device), Quantum-Si (the first single-molecule protein sequencing platform), and Hyperfine (the worlds first truly portable MRI machine). Absent a national plan, private institutions had been left to fend for themselves. They repeated the test with the same result, and Rothberg called in a favor with a friend and collaborator at Yale to line up an immediate PCR test, which confirmed the infection. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. content: ; [15] He founded the company with an undisclosed amount of his own money and later took in $23 million in venture capital. Detect founder Dr. Jonathan Rothberg has a strong track record of building successful companies that solve important scientific challenges. margin: 16px auto 0; Or maybe its not. He subsequently created semiconductor chip-based sequencing, using it to sequence the genome of Gordon Moore, namesake of Moores law, on a semiconductor chip another first in science. The issue could be solved relatively easily with the introduction of a single additional step to dilute the sample, but Rothberg refused to add any complexity for the user. These can be quick and inexpensive but arent generally as accurate as molecular tests, which indicate not the presence of a viral proxy, like a protein, but of the virus itself. For Elana, the lab is also a way to stay close to her family as she gains work experience. Our Chief Executive Officer Hugo Barra brings more than 20 years of executive experience in consumer technology to Detect with the goal of transforming consumer healthcare diagnostics into a new consumer product category. During the STAT Summit, Rothberg noted that his son used Detect to test his roommate in Miami. Rothberg pursued a Ph.D. in biology at Yale. Rothberg and his siblings describe an unruly but loving household; as Rothberg likes to put it, My mother had seven only children. Henry had a chemistry lab in the basement, and from an early age Jonathan pursued his own unsupervised experiments. Dr. Jonathan Rothberg is an American chemical engineer and biologist, inventor and entrepreneur. He prophesied a future in which his kits would be on sale at every Walgreens and CVS, a world in which self-testing has become one more morning ritual between brushing our teeth and putting on a pot of coffee. In late May, he told me that I was welcome to join the ship in port, as long as I was prepared to arrive by car rather than by plane. Noah and his daughter are doing well, reports Rothberg. Jonathan Rothberg on what motivates his research study, she did not trust. click the link in that email to complete your registration. Were going to hopefully find some new information about it.. In 2011, Rothberg founded Butterfly Network after seeing a talk by MIT physicist Max Tegmark, who was becoming fascinated by artificial intelligence. Not, however, Gene Machine yacht owner Jonathan Rothberg. Their hope was that by late autumn their supply chains, which included around a dozen venders, most of them domestic, could be producing millions of units per month. Rothberg was impatient to begin his external monologue wherever his internal one had been interrupted, but there was one piece of business he wanted to take care of first. I wanted to read his genome. In the US, on an ultrasound, you cant scan yourself, you need a health care professional to guide you remotely, Rothberg said, although self-scans are allowed in other countries, including Italy. I stopped as little as possible on the thirteen-hour drive to Savannah, but it was difficult to miss the abrupt shift in rest-stop mask prevalence in the stretch between Richmond, Virginia, and Rocky Mount, North Carolina. Wysor nevertheless saw a world of difference between an eighteen- or twenty-four-hour turnaround time and the forty-five-minute result Homodeus could provide. Rothberg, who received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Yale in 1991, is founder of a string of successful Connecticut companies, including 454 Life Science, CuraGen, Ion Torrent, Raindance Technologies, Hyperfine Research, Butterfly Network Inc., LAM Therapeutics, and 4Catalyzer. He spent his two weeks of paternity leave sketching out designs, and when he returned to CuraGen he formed a subsidiary company, 454 Life Sciences, to develop the idea. Water thats been frozen for 40,000 years is now coming off into the ocean, Elana says. Ad Choices. Hed give us hints, like what to do with the project, how to get the DNA out of the water, Elena recalled. As a result, they were going to have to price the kit at something like thirty-five dollars, at least initially, rather than ten. My arrival in Savannah coincided with the delivery of Rothbergs first manufactured prototypes. The flood of cash represents a victory swashbuckling biotech entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg who aims to change medical imaging with his $2,000 device. I stepped on a disinfectant mat, removed my shoes, and climbed the stairs to the main decks exterior corridor. Tom Ford. Dr. Jonathan Rothberg, founder and chairman of Butterfly Network (NYSE:BFLY) has a long track record of solving and scaling the impossible. [citation needed], Dr. Rothberg founded Liminal in 2018 with the goal of building a wearable brain monitor for acute and chronic conditions including stroke, traumatic brain injury, hydrocephalus, and epilepsy. Pulsed Wave Doppler only available in the U.S. 2. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community. (Courtesy), Jonathan Rothberg is seeking approval for a home coronavirus test to help turn the tide of the pandemic. She has a range of up to 4,500 nautical . For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. [34] Rothberg made Fortune Magazine's 2001 list of the 40 richest Americans under 40. The family got its boat back, and Rothberg got a new lab. She is propelled by twin 16-cylinder 1,410hp MTU (16V 2000 M70) diesel engines operating at 2100rpm which give her a cruising speed of 13.0 knots and a top speed of 15 knots. Sign in to stop seeing this, Sara Netanyahu accosted by protesters at Tel Aviv hair salon, extricated by police, Brides joy turns to sorrow after Elan Ganeles killed driving to her wedding, Hiker discovers 2,500-year-old ancient receipt from reign of Purim kings father, Netanyahu compares Tel Aviv protesters to settlers who set fire to Huwara. Johnathan Rothberg - Tufts Medical Center Community Care He remembers being honored by Obama, who made the day memorable not only for Rothberg, but also his family. Prior to that, Hugo was the Vice President of Global for Xiaomi, where he was responsible for the expansion of consumer electronics into 20 markets across 3 continents. The Detect test differs from the antibody and antigen versions being developed by other companies. I had a need because she was driving up to Boston to have ultrasound exams. Rothberg recognized that the average person was generally able to make tea, and his first thought was that the test tube could be placed into a cup of boiled water. Hed say, I used to be good at this.. The agency granted emergency-use authorizations (E.U.A.s) to the rapid point-of-care antigen tests produced by Quidel and by Becton, Dickinson & Company despite the fact that neither measured up to the PCR standard. Koty Sharp, one of Wysors colleagues in marine biology and a fellow-member of the task force, stood in for the health-services representative who would ultimately oversee the tests administration, and she and Rosenbluth tested three student volunteers. Jonathan Rothberg a pioneer in genetic sequencing technology, serial entrepreneur, Yale alumnus, and New Haven native will receive the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the White House announced Dec. 22. Your browser is antiquated and no longer supported on this website. What kinds of space are we willing to. Together with his wife Bonnie, they created the Rothberg Institute for Childhood Diseases. [3] Rothberg's family laid the foundation for his scientific career. A four-part strategy of hygiene, distancing, screening, and masks will not return us to normal life. The world and its crises felt keeningly distant. Payment options through Affirm are provided by these lending partners: affirm.com/lenders. 4. After six weeks in the Caribbean and Florida, the Gene Machine began to head north, taking up a berth at a marina in Savannah, Georgia, where Rothberg could more easily receive deliveries of the tools and matriel3-D printers, for example, that worked with biocompatible resinshe required for prototyping. He shelved these pursuits to work on a coronavirus test. Rothbergs vision for a shelf of silver Detect kits in every CVS was nevertheless intact, and over the blurry course of our video chat he lurched back and forth between disillusion with the country and pride in his company. 454 Life Sciences and the Baylor College of Medicine Genome Center were the first to complete and make public the sequence of an individual human genome (James D. Watson[9][10]). Early life [ edit] Rothberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Lillian Rothberg and Henry Rothberg, a chemical engineer. Elana sees the potential there too. They hope the strands of DNA will offer leads for potential medical therapies, or other scientific discoveries, just as mapping human genomes has done over the past decade. The company is working to get the Butterfly iQ ultrasound scanner into the hands of as many medical professionals as possible. Jonathan Rothberg, PhD < Yale School of Medicine Rothberg was reassured by a paper indicating that the virus could be reliably detected in the lower nostrils, and moved on to swab design. content: More Business Video; Jonathan M. Rothberg - Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering He and his wife, Dr. Bonnie Gould Rothberg, an assistant professor of medicine at Yale, have five children and live in Guilford. [citation needed], Rothberg and his wife Bonnie, a physician who also holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology from Yale, have five children, whom Rothberg often refers to in his speeches. (Their sensitivity, or rate of false negatives, is less certain.) I had been around Rothbergs children, and the moment was tense. At various points in his career hes considered a return to academia; in each case he has found himself haunted by a practical problem of some personal urgency, and has relapsed into commercial enterprise. Rothberg felt compelled to help with the pandemic response. Rothberg prides himself on his ability to identify and recruit talent from academia, finance, and the health-care industry, and in the process has essentially re-created his own jostling family under cover of startup cultivation. [17] The core technology is a silicon chip, contrasting with other ultrasound devices that use piezoelectric crystals. A few days later, his wife, Bonnie Gould Rothberg, a physician and epidemiologist, was recalled to her post at Yale New Haven Hospital. The test tubes had to be shaken vigorously and then flickedwords that were not entirely self-explanatorybefore being placed in the heater. I guess thats how I think, too, about this project. Each decision we make, each and every one, make sure it saves the life of somebody you love., I do think my Jewish heritage [plays a part], he said, citing Yale professor Paul Johnsons book A History of the Jews. Maybe I feel, whenever were at forks in history, I have to do everything I can to help.. Six months after its theatrical dbut, Ion Torrent was sold to Life Technologies for a total of about seven hundred and twenty-five million dollars. Gene Machine - Forbes Rothberg was known, however, for his intransigence in the face of technical challenges. Rothberg founded Quantum-Si in 2013 with the mission of transforming single molecule analysis and democratizing its use by providing researchers and clinicians access to the proteome, the set of proteins expressed within a cell. Colorimetric readout by #iOS or #Android #App w/ #geolocation & #HIPPA compliant reporting. How vials of frozen, genetically engineered rodentsperm, raced to a remote lab in Maine, produced a breed of critters that could help scientists find a treatment or a vaccine. [6], While a graduate student at Yale, he founded CuraGen, one of the first genomics companies in 1991. (Courtesy), Then-president Barack Obama shakes hands with Dr. Jonathan Rothberg, of the 4catalyzer Corporation and Yale School of Medicine after awarding him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, Thursday, May 19, 2016, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington. How to test everyone for the coronavirus | MIT Technology Review Dr. Rothberg launched Detect in partnership with consumer electronics veteran and now Detect CEO Hugo Barra at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic with the goal of bringing pathogen testing into the home. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories, On the morning of March 7th, the inventor and entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg announced, on Twitter, that hed been thinking through the possibility of a low cost easy to manufacture home test kit for #Coronavirus. Attached to the tweet was a photo of a clean-swept desk before an orderly collection of curious desktop appliances, backlit, through a large picture window, by the suns reflection in an azure surf. This wasnt the only concern. Rothberg would joke, too. Come on. As for his coronavirus test, he said, The moment its approved, well be able to increase testing to those who are most vulnerable and alleviate doctors. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association is an association of independent, locally operated Blue Cross and Blue Shield Companies. He taught himself to write code on an early Texas Instruments minicomputer, then sold an inventory-management program to a local tire shop, but wasnt trusted with the house keys. The nephew whod stowed away on the Gene Machine in the spring had recently gone off to his freshman year in college, in Miami; within a week, there were infections on the two floors above him, and before he knew it he was isolated in a hotel room. Thats why we started the Times of Israel ten years ago - to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world. His optimism was, according to his employees, characteristic; Owen Kaye-Kauderer, a co-founder of Homodeus and one of the many bright, industrious twentysomethings with whom Rothberg regularly collaborates, told me that Rothbergs ideal company featured one domain expert surrounded by seven kids who dont know that what theyre trying to do cant be done. At the same time, Rothbergs suspicion that by the beginning of the summer there would still be an urgent need for his intervention betrayed a realism, even a pessimism, about the likelihood of a competent centralized response. In the wake of the dot-com bust, CuraGens stock price fell precipitously. Butterfly iQ is a registered trademark of Butterfly Network, Inc. 2023 Blue Cross Blue Shield Association - All Rights Reserved. (Courtesy), Jonathan Rothbergs portable MRI machine. When COVID-19 first struck, he was working on several endeavors while on vacation a search for enzymes that would break down plastics in the ocean; and a quest for evidence of the theory of panspermia, which posits that life on Earth is descended from interstellar dust.