Jonathan Rothberg is perhaps one of Connecticut’s and the nation’s most prolific inventors and commercializers of bioscience technology.
His first company CuraGen — begun while he was a graduate student at Yale — worked to develop drugs that targeted specific genes. He went on to invent a method for high-speed DNA sequencing, bringing it to market with his second venture, 454 Life Sciences.
And now, several companies later, his Guilford-based accelerator, 4Catalyzer, is launching multiple startups at the intersections of medicine, engineering and machine learning.
Rothberg was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama in 2016. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and has been awarded the Connecticut Medal of Technology.
He’s been named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum four times, among a host of other recognitions.
Throughout his success, Rothberg has remained close to his roots in Connecticut, partly because he says it’s a great place to raise a family, but also as a strategic decision for his businesses.
“Connecticut has a fantastic history of machining engineering and engineering discipline,” he told the HBJ in 2022, adding that he hires engineers from the state’s advanced manufacturing companies.