Ellen Dias Jorgensen

Ellen Dias Jorgensen is a molecular biologist and a passionate advocate of citizen science. She attended Columbia University and New York University, earning her doctorate in 1987. Her research interests have encompassed such diverse areas as free radicals in disease, DNA fingerprinting, virus protein structure/function relationships, and cancer biomarkers. In 1993 she helped found the nonprofit Sabin Vaccine Institute and served as its Scientific Program Director. She has held a variety of research & development positions in the biotechnology industry. From 2001 to 2009 she directed a comprehensive program to develop early detection biomarkers of lung cancer, integrating data from studies utilizing high-density expression arrays, proteomics, phosphomics, and laser scanning cytometry.

In 2009 she returned to the nonprofit sphere by co-founding Genspace NYC, the world’s first community biotechnology laboratory. Its mission is to promote science literacy and demystify the latest advances in biotechnology and synthetic biology though education, outreach, and engaging the general public in a hands-on manner. Her analysis of Genspace’s groundbreaking efforts to teach synthetic biology and biotechnology to non-scientists was awarded the prize for Best Social Study in Synthetic Biology at SB 5.0, the leading international synthetic biology conference. In the summer of 2011 Dr. Jorgensen was the head mentor for a gold medal-winning team housed at Genspace and composed of students from Cooper Union and the Columbia School of Architecture who successfully competed in the 2011 International Genetically Engineered Machine competition. She has spearheaded many of Genspace’s unique outreach programs such as the collaborative effort between the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and Genspace to mentor students competing in the Urban Barcode Project via the use of DNA-based species identification technologies. She has served as Genspace’s  president for the past two years, and her efforts to develop Genspace into a haven for entrepreneurship, innovation and citizen science have been chronicled in Nature Medicine, Science, Discover Magazine, and the science section of the New York Times.