David Botstein

David Botstein was a key member of the BioFrontiers Institute's Advisory Board from 2011 (known as the Colorado Initiative for Molecular Biotechnology at that time) through 2019 and continued to serve as a member of the BioFrontiers Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology PhD Program Advisory Board until his passing in 2026. His brilliance, energy, and fearlessness were critical to shaping the interdisciplinary and collaborative mission of BioFrontiers research and education. He was also an irreplaceable scientific colleague and valued friend of many BioFrontiers Institute members. To learn more about David's incredible contributions to genetics and biotechnology, you can read his obituary here.

Dr. Botstein was a giant of modern-day genetics and biotechnology. He made fundamental contributions to modern genetics, including the discovery of many yeast and bacterial genes and the establishment of key laboratory techniques that are commonly used today. In 1980, Botstein and three colleagues proposed a method for mapping genes that laid the groundwork for the Human Genome Project. Botstein received his Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan before teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1967 to 1988. He then served as vice president for science at the biotechnology company Genentech for two years before joining the faculty at the Stanford School of Medicine. In 2003, he was named Director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics and Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics at Princeton University. Under his leadership, the institute developed an innovative Integrated Science Curriculum, which combined training in biology, physics, chemistry, and computer science to cultivate a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists. From 2013-2023, he served as the founding Chief Scientific Officer of Calico. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine and received numerous awards, including the Genetics Society of America Medal (1988), the Allan Award of the American Society of Human Genetics (1989), and the Gruber Prize in Genetics (2003). He was also honored with the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2013) for his seminal work in genetic mapping. In 2020, he received the Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal from the Genetics Society of America.