His mind was in some Aegean port, and he didnt seem to notice the vicious clouds of stinging gnats. A streamlined operation might be able to complete thousands of tests at once, but trucks can only carry so many samples and move so quickly, and the turnaround time for a result is almost never less than a day. They would collect their own samples under supervision, but would they manage the next steps on their own? Rothberg's passion for biotechnology was spurred in part by his daughter's rare genetic disorder and, later, a life . [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. The Gene Machine was moored at a distance from the other resting vessels, on the perimeter of a basin adjacent to the marinas active shipyard, where rusty fishing charters and stocky catamarans hung suspended in drydock. The following year, the bull market drove the share price from five dollars to two hundred and fifty in six months. 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). Teleguidance only available for iOS devices. Sponsored by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBSA), Not Impossibles Healthcare Breakthrough Award category recognizes innovations in healthcare. for their antigen test in April, had not yet achieved regulatory approvalthere was no shortage of entrants to the field. [15] He founded the company with an undisclosed amount of his own money and later took in $23 million in venture capital. By Alex Philippidis. After experiences at CuraGen and 454 Life Sciences, he made sure to retain supervoting share majority so he could not be forced out. Unlike previous operating systems, which use fragile crystals to create these wavelengths, Rothbergs scanner uses 9,000 tiny sensors. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. I had a need with my daughter. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. in biology from Yale University. Come on. Jonathan Rothberg on what motivates his research He previously served as Chairman of Butterflys board of directors from March 2014 to February 2021, Butterflys Chief Executive Officer from March 2014 to April 2020, and Butterflys President from March 2014 to April 2014. Elsewhere, it was understood that closure was a real possibility unless help arrived soon. Inspired by both the utility and the limitations of EEG (electroencephalogram), Liminal has invented AEG, a new modality that combines blood flow measurement with the existing technology that monitors the electrical activity of the brain. I had known from my work at Ion Torrent that if you can leverage Moore's law . 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. Hugo holds two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From his invention of revolutionary DNA sequencing technologies to hand-held medical imaging devices, his highly innovative contributions have had enormous impact. 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]). 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. Where would the students go to wait, and what would they do for that half hour? As a chemical engineer, biologist, and professor of genetics at Yale University, Rothberg's response to his daughter's diagnosis and the lack of satisfactory medical solutions was to search for a cure himself. (The word itself is derived from the forty days of isolation imposed by the Venetian authorities on incoming ships.) Some of the dorm rooms had been set aside as isolation units; if the task force could instantly sequester an infectious student, they felt they stood a good chance of making it to November. If [a clinical trial is] shown to be effective, and we get emergency use authorization, thats exciting, Rothberg said. In 1999,. Putting the work space on the familys boat instead of at 4Catalyzer in Guilford meant Elana could come along on the familys vacation and still conduct research. My wife, however, was nine months pregnant, and if there were even a chance our son was infectious we needed to take immediate steps. Amid the Coronavirus Crisis, a Regimen for Rentry. 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. What I had experienced in miniature was at the heart of a national debate about testing and public health. The unit has FDA clearance for diagnostic imaging of 13 clinical conditions, covering the entire body. Dr. Jonathan Rothberg is the founder of multiple life science and medical device companies including Butterfly Network, Hyperfine and the 4Catalyzer incubator. A newly discovered chemical problem was causing a high rate of invalid teststhat is, tests that registered the presence of neither viral nor human genetic material. The consequences of this breakthrough for personalized health, forensic investigation, and the study of human prehistory, to take only a few examples, have been breathtaking; in 2016, President Barack Obama bestowed upon him the National Medal of Technology and Innovation for his achievement. I disobeyed the doctor and drove our son to the Bronx. The medal is awarded annually to individuals, teams, companies, or divisions of companies for their outstanding contributions to Americas economic, environmental, and social well-being. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and serves on . In times of distress, Rothberg soothes himself with engineering problems, and as he sat in the waiting room he fixated on the fact that there was no expeditious way to determine whether the babys condition was genetic. Hed say, I used to be good at this.. After a study by the Gates Foundation showed that swabs should be flocked, or tipped with tiny bristles, rather than spun on the model of a Q-tip, Rothbergs supply-chain managerswho were, as often as not, also his engineersimmediately began to negotiate with a Taiwanese vender to produce small flocked versions for their exclusive use. In 2011, when his daughter, Alana, faced issues with her kidneys, he developed a monitoring ultrasound on a microchip under the company Butterfly Network. The Gene Machine is equipped with a lab, and thats where Rothberg began his work. [17] The use of silicon makes the device far cheaper to manufacture. Christopher Mason, the geneticist at Weill Cornell Medicine, had partnered with his brother, the mayor of Racine, Wisconsin, to test all of the citys employees out of an impromptu lab in the local firehouse, and others set up mobile labs in vans. With each passing week, the situation had grown increasingly dire. 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. 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. Theyd seen dolphins and the occasional alligator. If we discover something groundbreaking, I could be helping the community or the world.. When Rothberg bought his eldest daughter a watch that was supposed to warn of seizures, it produced so many false alarms that he decided to throw it away and start his own epilepsy firm. Rothberg married Gould, a graduate of Yales medical and public-health programs, in 1995; in 1996, their first child, a daughter, was born with a condition that can cause seizures. He earned a B.S. Most people think viruses and bacteria are pathogens and disease-causing agents, and they are, Wang says. It was a promising advance, but Rothberg wanted to go further: to contain the entire mechanism in a single vial. The Butterfly iQ is the first hand-held, ultrasound scanner for under $2,000, substantially lower than other handheld scanners and a far cry from the cost of traditional ultrasound medical imaging technology, which can range anywhere from $20,000 up. They use it to screen for COVID and COVID complications in the brain. He added that the portable scans have been approved by the FDA as well as almost 60 other countries. he enlisted the aid of a high-ranking executive at a major Silicon Valley firm who preferred that his involvement not yet be a matter of public record, leaving Rothberg free to play a more expansive, oracular role. Butterfly iQ is a registered trademark of Butterfly Network, Inc. 2023 Blue Cross Blue Shield Association - All Rights Reserved. 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. Tom Ford. All supplies coming on board were cleaned, and anyone entering the ship had to isolate and test for COVID-19. 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. We turned around and went to the pediatrician, where an instant test for strep came back positive. Recently, the F.D.A. in biology from Yale University and his B.S. Winning the award for healthcare innovation. Rothberg wanted to abbreviate all of this commotion. [29] The TSC project was based on technology known as the Drug Design and Optimization Lab (D2OL), which the institute sponsored through 2009, to use volunteers' personal computers to model interactions of drug candidates with their target molecules. These bacterial viruses exist in greater numbers than all other living things combined. This summer, they launched the research project by collecting samples from 32 bodies of water across the world. Rothberg told The Times of Israel that the immunosuppressive drug his daughter takes is the result of an initiative that he and his wife sponsored 15 years ago in an attempt to help her. Jonathan Rothberg is the founder of Butterfly and has served as the Chairman of New Butterfly's board of directors since February 2021. Platforms get smarter as customers use them. Rothberg opted for a specific kind of molecular test a rapid molecular test, which he says never existed before.. [6], While a graduate student at Yale, he founded CuraGen, one of the first genomics companies in 1991. As a chemical engineer, biologist, and professor of genetics at Yale University, Rothbergs response to his daughters diagnosis and the lack of satisfactory medical solutions was to search for a cure himself. Rothbergs eldest daughter falls into a high-risk categoryshe takes immunosuppressant drugsand nothing was safer than a naval quarantine. They aimed to deliver their first fifty thousand kitsa fraction of which, Kaye-Kauderer told me, they hoped to reserve for lower-resource communitieswhile it was still early in the semester. The flood of cash represents a victory swashbuckling biotech entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg who aims to change medical imaging with his $2,000 device. But we cant wait for approval in terms of gearing up as Im speaking to you [were manufacturing] one million tests a month, financing 10 million tests a month. And, as he told his investors, their product had long-term post-pandemic potential: what he first called COVID Detect was quickly reimagined as Detect, a flexible diagnostic platform that could easily be retooled to identify cases of the flu, respiratory syncytial virus, and a variety of other maladies. Tests arent going to be like that, and were going to need antibody and antigen tests for population-level control. The Guilford teenager, visiting the archipelago Svalbard with her family, wasnt after a simple answer, no list of mammals and fish and zooplankton. I liked having a nucleic-acid test before I brought someone onto my boat, for example, where the attack rate wouldve been horrible.. Most people are familiar with only a few types of bacteria, like salmonella, E. coli, and listeria, but there are actually about one trillion species of bacteria on Earth, according to scientific estimates. His initiatives include not only the Detect coronavirus test but also the Butterfly iQ, an ultra-portable, whole-body ultrasound that he describes as the top-selling in the world; a groundbreaking portable MRI; and a drug called LAM002 that he says shows promise against COVID-19. This method could bring the cost of each test down to perhaps three or four dollars. For the Butterfly iQ, my daughter went up to Boston to do a kind of scan with specialized equipment that would do a volumetric ultrasound. It was clear to many scientists, Rothberg among them, that the best bet for a cut-rate but exacting diagnostic technology was loop-mediated isothermal nucleic acid amplification (LAMP), which was patented by a Japanese pharmaceutical company twenty years ago, and has primarily been used to meet diagnostic needs in low-resource places, for tropical diseases like Zika and dengue fever. Deans Advisory Council on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Affairs Website, Minority Organization for Retention and Expansion Website, Committee on the Status of Women in Medicine Website, Director of Scientist Diversity and Inclusion, Diversity, Inclusion, Community Engagement, and Equity Website, Yale BBS Diversity & Inclusion Collective, Physician-Scientist & Scientist Development, Yale Physician-Scientist Development Awards, Yale International Physician-Scientist Resident and Fellow Research Award, Program for the Promotion of Interdisciplinary Team Science (POINTS), Connecticut Towns COVID-19 Impact Dashboard, CT Correctional Facilities with COVID Cases Dashboard, US Racial and Ethnic Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality, Risk of Complications Conditional on COVID-19 Infection, Travel Time to COVID Testing Sites in Connecticut, Travel Time to COVID Testing Sites in the US, Peer-Reviewed Publications by Yale Authors, https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/17621/internet-explorer-downloads. Do you rely on The Times of Israel for accurate and insightful news on Israel and the Jewish world? . One of these tech companies is called the Butterfly Network, whose mission is to democratize healthcare by making medical imaging accessible to everyone around the world. Thats no easy task. [4], Rothberg earned a BS in chemical engineering with an option in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. I was going to give it to him anyway, she joked. Meanwhile, the US Food and Drug Administration announced approval of the first rapid-results, at-home self-test on November 17. Rothberg came over to look into the problem, but Bean was already on his way downstairs to retrieve a set of replacement components that had been printed on the boat. She notes that before penicillin was discovered in 1928, people sometimes used these bacterial viruses, or phages, to treat infections. At 454 Life Sciences, we built the first high-throughput next-gen genome sequencer and invented the core technologies behind all of next-gen sequencing: cloning by limiting dilution and sequencing by synthesis on a single substrate.At Ion Torrent, we invented sequencing on a semiconductor chip. Lets let people see their families for the holiday. The pessimism was taken for granted: if people like him werent going to save you, who would? How would students be recalled from the waiting area for notification? The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. (Courtesy), Jonathan Rothbergs portable MRI machine. [2][28] In 2002, the couple started the nonprofit Rothberg Institute for Childhood Diseases which works on treatments for tuberous sclerosis, a rare disease that affects one of their children. With the exception of the heater, which Rothberg planned to do away with eventually, the design made good on everything he considered crucial. They don't come from an idea. 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.. Each of these sensors creates a waveform, like hitting the top of the drum. When the roommate tested positive, he isolated from Rothbergs son and their other roommate which, according to Rothberg, prevented them from becoming exposed. That was about as far ahead as they thought they could reasonably plan. He is offering this to the local community as well. The yellowish water should be significantly different from samples of the ocean and freshwater. I do everything because I want to make a difference for somebody I love.. We have a drug that may stop the entry of the virus into the heart, The number-one drug was our LAM002 [in the Gates Foundation-funded study], Rothberg said. Rothberg is a tall, lanky, guilelessly charismatic man with a broad, wind-chapped face and a boyish mop of windblown brown hair. Meanwhile, Rothberg is monitoring his other coronavirus-related ventures. Whenever his wife was able to be home from the hospital for dinner, the children passed their mothers face in two dimensions around the table. Rothberg would joke, too. 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. Xiaomi, currently the world's #1 smartphone manufacturer, held an initial public offering (IPO) in 2018 with a valuation of $54B, one of the largest technology IPOs of all time. Early life [ edit] Rothberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Lillian Rothberg and Henry Rothberg, a chemical engineer. In mid-August, Stanford and Columbia announced that they were cancelling plans to resume in-class instruction. Although Rothberg had designed his kit for home diagnosis, he had been told early on that he should first pursue F.D.A. 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. Butterfly has had a very successful training program.. [32], Rothberg was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama in 2016 for his pioneering inventions and commercialization of next-generation DNA sequencing technologies, making access to genomic information easier, faster and more cost-effective for researchers around the world". So now we have a request. Think of them as the tops of little drums, all residing on a single silicon chip. Illumina is now a fifty-billion-dollar enterprise. In 2008, Rothberg and a research team used his technique to map and publish the first complete genome of a single individual, the geneticist James Watson. 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. *Your rate will be 0% APR or 1030% APR based on credit, and is subject to an eligibility check. Our own nucleic-acid tests are going to complement lab tests where you want that accuracywhen you have a child with an immune deficiency, or when you have a pregnant wife. That same daughter, now grown, uses the lab for her own scientific research. His startup AI Therapeutics began looking for a drug to fight COVID in January, when its co-founder traveled to ground zero of the virus in Wuhan, China. He developed a high-speed "Next-Gen" DNA sequencing process, motivated by the opportunity to impact the lives of the people he loves. In February, Rothberg had been dumbstruck by the U.S. governments failure to marshal its resources in preparation for a comprehensive clinical-testing regime. The Homodeus team had been invited to the campus of Roger Williams University, which cleaves to a peninsular hillside in Bristol, Rhode Island, to conduct a pilot. Dr. Rothberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Lillian Rothberg and Henry Rothberg, a chemical engineer. You might test all visitors to your home the way he tests all visitors to his boat. Then I placed the tube in the small heater and clicked the timer, which was set for thirty minutes. For financing, he brought in Emil Michael, best known for his role as the money man at Uber, and as C.E.O. He had promised his youngest child, a nine-year-old, that they could spend the odd hours of the summer constructing a small hoverboard, and among the boxes disinfected and carted aboard each day were sets of ducted fans and microcontrollers. One of his latest companies, Butterfly Network, recently began selling $2,000 handheld ultrasound device that are more advanced and less expensive than those of competitors. (A subsequent study, conducted by independent researchers at N.Y.U., indicated an accuracy of barely fifty per cent. Person Details. For as little as $6/month, you will: Were really pleased that youve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month. [19] In 2021 Quantum-Si went public on the NASDAQ under the ticker $QSI. Using the drug LAM002, or apilimod, AI Therapeutics obtained hopeful results, which Rothberg says are backed up by an independent Harvard lab and a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded study of 12,000 drugs and compounds. Professor (Adjunct) of Research of Genetics. display: block; . New York City, NY. Microbiologists guess there are 10 times as many bacterial viruses, or bacteriophages, as bacteria. He is best known for inventing and commercializing massively parallel DNA sequencing, which earned him a National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama, the nation's highest honor for technological achievement. GUILFORD, Conn. Guilford based, a world-renowned scientist and engineer, Jonathan Rothberg, spent his quarantine developing an at-home Covid test kit in the lab aboard his superyacht. Rx only (USA). The long nasopharyngeal swabs used in most tests, for example, had been widely unavailable. The process, however, is embedded in a vast infrastructure: labs depend on complex supply chains for materials and reagents, and samples must be collected and distributed throughout a network of depots for processing. All of his companies are all about helping the people he loves, she says. Please update your browser or switch to Chrome, Firefox or Safari. The shipyard was still for the day, and only the occasional police helicopter overhead broke the lush crepuscular silence. He compares it to the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test in terms of effectiveness and claims that it is more accurate than an antibody or antigen test. Detect founder Dr. Jonathan Rothberg has a strong track record of building successful companies that solve important scientific challenges. He is best known for his contributions to next-generation DNA sequencing. He is best known for inventing and commercializing massively parallel DNA sequencing, which earned him a National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama, the nations highest honor for technological achievement. Dr. Rothberg is widely published, was twice named as The World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneer, is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and received The Wall Street Journal's First Gold Medal for Innovation. 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. Jonathan Rothberg's income source is mostly from being a successful . Guilford, CT. Jonathan is that rare person who can do both, with aplomb. But Elana has learned from her father and mother, medical oncologist Bonnie Gould-Rothberg, that its worth solving a difficult problem if it will help someone. Jonathan Rothberg net worth is $2 Million Jonathan Rothberg Wiki: Salary, Married, Wedding, Spouse, Family Jonathan Rothberg is known for his work on Nova (1974) and Revealed (2002). width: 100px; } In the case of Jonathan Rothberg, M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D., it began when his daughter was diagnosed with a rare disease called tuberous sclerosis, which causes tumors or growths in the body. Dr Jonathan Rothberg is a man on a mission. She wanted to know what genes, chromosomes and proteins the building blocks of precision medicine could be hidden in this sea that seemed so crisp and bottomless and empty. First, he created fast-DNA sequencing, now called next-gen DNA sequencing, through which he achieved a breakthrough by sequencing an individual human genome that of DNA co-discoverer James Watson. Optimizing this system requires a good deal of centralized cordination and oversight. Rothberg felt compelled to help with the pandemic response. This wasnt the only concern. His contributions; cloning by limited dilution, and massively parallel DNA sequencing, are the basis of all subsequent high-speed sequencing methods. He never developed symptoms. Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus, he wrote. "Jonathan M. Rothberg wants to do for DNA sequencing what Steve Jobs did for computing spread it to the masses. It wasnt quite clear which steps of the process were best carried out by students and which required staff assistance. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. in biology from Yale University. Not, however, Gene Machine yacht owner Jonathan Rothberg. The closest thing we have to a gold standard of pathogenic diagnosis is the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, which registers even trace amounts of the viruss nucleic acid. I guess thats how I think, too, about this project. (Their sensitivity, or rate of false negatives, is less certain.) His introduction of massively parallel DNA sequencing technology greatly increased the speed and efficiency of genomic analysis. Rothberg was unhappy about the setback, he told me, but he retained his sunny, page-a-day-calendar outlook: The nature of developing stuff is you have to get up more than you get knocked down., He reminded himself why hed embarked on this course at the beginning. There were likely more economical solutions: Roger Williams could, for example, buy home-brew LAMP kits from New England Biolabs and set up its own lab on the Racine, Wisconsin, model.