AAAS Dialogue on Science, Ethics, and Religion

Biography

Rudolf Jaenisch, Ph.D. and professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is one of the founders of transgenic science (gene transfer to create mouse models of human disease). His lab has produced mouse models leading to new understanding of cancers and various neurological diseases. He also has made important contributions to cloning technology. Studies of cloned mice will help decipher how the genome from an adult cell is reprogrammed to create a new organism. Jaenisch is a founding Member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a non-profit, independent research and educational institution with pathfinding programs in cancer and AIDS research, structural biology, genetics, infectious disease research, developmental biology, and transgenic science. He received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Munich in 1967. He came to the Whitehead from the University of Hamburg in Germany, where he was head of the Department of Tumor Virology at the Heinrich Pette Institute. Jaenisch is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology, and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1996, he was awarded the Boehringer Mannheim Molecular Bioanalytics Prize.