Jonathan Rothberg Biography and Net Worth

Jonathan M. Rothberg, Ph.D., is the founder of Quantum-Si and served as the Chairman of Quantum-Si’s board of directors from December 2015 through May 26, 2024. He previously served as Quantum-Si’s CEO from December 2015 to November 2020. Dr. Rothberg is a scientist and entrepreneur who was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technological achievement, by President Barack Obama for inventing and commercializing high-speed DNA sequencing. Dr. Rothberg is the founder of the 4Catalyzer medical technology incubator and the founder and Chairman of its companies: Quantum-Si, Butterfly Network, Inc., AI Therapeutics, Inc., Hyperfine Research, Inc., Tesseract Health, Inc., Liminal Sciences, Inc., and Detect, Inc. and Protein Engineering, Inc. These companies focus on using inflection points in medicine, such as deep learning, next-generation sequencing, and the silicon supply chain, to address global healthcare challenges. Dr. Rothberg previously founded and served as Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Technology Officer of Ion Torrent Systems, Inc. from 2007 to 2010, and founded and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of RainDance Technologies, Inc. from 2004 to 2009. 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. With 454 Life Sciences, Dr. Rothberg brought to market the first new way to sequence genomes since Sanger and Gilbert won the Nobel Prize for their method in 1980. With 454’s technology, Dr. Rothberg sequenced the first individual human genome, and with Svante Paabo he initiated the first large-scale effort to sequence ancient DNA (The Neanderthal Genome Project). Prior to 454 Life Sciences, Dr. Rothberg founded and served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CuraGen Corporation from 1993 to 2004. His contributions to the field of genome sequencing include the first non-bacterial cloning method (cloning by limited dilution) and the first massively parallel DNA sequencing method (parallel sequencing by synthesis on a single substrate), concepts that have formed the basis for all subsequent next generation sequencing technologies. Dr. Rothberg is an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year, is the recipient of The Wall Street Journal’s First Gold Medal for Innovation, SXSW Best in Show, Nature Methods First Method of the Year Award, the Connecticut Medal of Technology, the DGKL Biochemical Analysis Prize, and an Honorary Doctorate of Science from Mount Sinai. Dr. Rothberg is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, served as a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University and is an Adjunct Professor of Genetics at Yale University. Dr. Rothberg received his Ph.D., M.Phil. and M.S. in biology from Yale University and his B.S. in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.