George Weinstock, Ph.D.
Co-Director, Human Genome Sequencing Center
Professor, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics

Dr. Weinstock received his Ph.D. from the Biology Department at MIT and postdoctoral training in the Biochemistry Department, Stanford University Medical School. Following four years at the Frederick Cancer Research Facility, where he headed the DNA Metabolism Section, Laboratory of Genetics and Recombinant DNA, he moved to Houston.

Weinstock has worked extensively on DNA recombination, repair, and gene expression in E.coli. Since 1985, he also has been studying the molecular basis of infectious diseases, studying difficult pathogens using molecular and genomic approaches. He began a project to sequence the genome of the Treponema pallidum, causative agent of syphilis, in 1988 that reached a successful conclusion 10 years later. During this period, he was involved in the rapid growth of the microbial genomics field.

He became Co-Director of the BCM-HGSC in 1998, when acceleration of the NIH Human Genome Project began, and helped lead an order of magnitude scale-up at the BCM-HGSC. Currently, his work involves post-sequencing functional genomics and informatics, as well as genome sequencing projects on human, rat, and microbes.