OLIVER MEDVEDIK

Ph.D, Co-Founder, Genspace and Bioworks Institute

Oliver is Director of Science at Terreform ONE and Genspace. He is also the Sandholm Visiting Professor of Biology and Bioengineering and Assistant Director of the Maurice Kanbar Center for Biomedical Engineering at The Cooper Union. In addition, Oliver is faculty at the School of Visual Arts (SVA). Oliver earned his Ph.D. from Harvard Medical School in the Biomedical and Biological Sciences program. As part of his doctoral work he has used single-celled budding yeast as a genetic system to map pathways that underlie the processes of aging in more complex organisms, such as humans. Prior to arriving in Boston in 1999 for his doctoral studies, he has lived most of his life in New York City. Since graduating in 2006 from Harvard, he has worked as a consultant for Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a biotechnology company specializing in the research and development of small-molecule therapeutics to treat age-onset diseases, such as diabetes. He has mentored two of Harvard's teams for the international genetically engineered machines competition (IGEM) held annually at M.I.T. Currently, he is the principal investigator at the Bioworks Institute laboratory for art and biology, and Genspace community biotechnology laboratory in Brooklyn, New York. Oliver has been awarded the TED fellowship for 2012.

Web: Genspace
E-mail: oliver@genspace.org