J. Craig Venter

J. Craig Venter developed the whole-genome shotgun sequencing strategy that dramatically accelerated genome sequencing and pioneered expressed sequence tag approaches for rapid gene discovery, technologies that were subsequently applied to cancer genome sequencing. His competition with the public Human Genome Project spurred both efforts to early completion, accelerating the availability of genomic tools for cancer research by years. His work on synthetic genomics and rapid sequencing technology development has continually pushed the boundaries of what is achievable in cancer genomics.