Healthcare >> CEO Interviews >> March 8, 2004
dr. JONATHAN M. ROTHBERG is the Founder, Chairman, President and Chief
Executive Officer of CuraGen Corporation, a genomics-based
pharmaceutical company headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. 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
an 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. 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 Life
Sciences, a majority-owned subsidiary of CuraGen 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
Corporation and a picture of what you are doing at the present time?
Dr. Rothberg: CuraGen was formed to take advantage of
