Christopher Mason
Dr. Christopher Mason is co-Founder and global director at Biotia, a Professor of Genomics, Physiology, and Biophysics at Weill Cornell Medicine and the Director of the WorldQuant Initiative for Quantitative Prediction. He is also co-Founder and scientific director at Onegevity/Thorne HealthTech, and author of The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds and The Age of Prediction. Dr. Mason and his lab develop and deploy computational and experimental methodologies to identify the functional genetic elements of the human genome and metagenome. We perform research in three main areas: (1) molecular profiling of extreme phenotypes, including aggressive cancers, unusual diseases, and long-duration missions in astronauts, (2) creating new biochemical and computational techniques in DNA/RNA sequencing and DNA/RNA base modifications, and (3) the development of new cell and genome modifications. In the very long term, we believe these systems-based methods will enable an understanding of the functional elements of the human genome and metagenome, such that we can begin to repair or re-engineer these genetic networks for ameliorating disease and lay the foundation to enable long-term human survival.
Dr. Mason has won the NIH’s Transformative R01 Award, the NASA Group Achievement Award, the International Space Station (ISS) R&D Award, the CDC Honor Award for Standardization of Clinical Testing, the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance Young Investigator award, the Hirschl-Weill-Caulier Career Scientist Award, the Vallee Scholar Award, the WorldQuant Scholar Award, and serves on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Decadal Survey for NASA. He was named as one of the “Brilliant Ten” Scientists by Popular Science, featured as a TEDMED speaker, and called “The Genius of Genetics” by 92Y. He has written 2 books and >300 peer-reviewed papers, featured on the covers of Nature, Science, Cell, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Microbiology, and Neuron, as well as legal briefs cited by U.S. District Courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. Coverage of his work has also appeared on the covers of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, TIME, The LA Times, and across many media (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CNN, PBS, NASA, NatGeo). He is an inventor on five patents, co-creator of five FDA-authorized diagnostic tests, has co-founded 10 biotechnology companies (Aevum, Biotia, BridgeOmics, Cosmica, Fremen Space, Genome Liberty, Nurture Genomics, Onegevity, Resilience Health, and Ursa Bio),and 3 non-profits (MetaSUB, Testing for America, TwoFrontiers), and serves as an advisor to 32 others. He lives with his daughter and wife in Brooklyn, NY.