Erik Sontheimer

Erik J. Sontheimer, Ph.D., is the Pillar Chair in Biomedical Research and Professor at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School, where he serves as Vice Chair of the RNA Therapeutics Institute. A leading expert in RNA biology and gene editing, he earned his Ph.D. from Yale in 1992 and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago before joining Northwestern University in 1999. His pioneering work on CRISPR systems led to the discovery that they target DNA directly, laying the foundation for RNA-guided genome engineering. He co-founded Intellia Therapeutics in 2014 to advance CRISPR-based therapies. Dr. Sontheimer has received numerous honors, including awards from the National Science Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and the American Cancer Society, and he is an elected member of the American Academy of Microbiology. He has held leadership roles with the NIH Somatic Cell Genome Editing Consortium and the National Cancer Institute’s Board of Scientific Counselors.