Part 1 of the TED Radio Hour episode “The biotech visionaries”
Biochemist Jennifer Doudna helped discover the genetic editing tool CRISPR in 2011. Today, as it begins to deliver on its medical promises, she emphasizes the need to balance ethics with innovation.
About Jennifer Doudna
Jennifer Doudna is a biochemist at the University of California, Berkeley and a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry. She won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for co-inventing CRISPR technology. She’s the founder of the Innovative Genomics Institute and leads the Doudna Lab.
She is the co-author of the book A Crack in Creation. Doudna has received numerous other awards for her work, including the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Japan Prize, the Kavli Prize, the LUI Che Woo Welfare Betterment Prize and the Wolf Prize in Medicine.
Doudna earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Pomona College and her PhD in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology from Harvard Medical School.
This segment of TED Radio Hour was produced by Rachel Faulkner White and edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour. You can follow us on Facebook @TEDRadioHour and email us at [email protected].
Web Resources
Related TED Bio: Jennifer Doudna
Related TED Talk: What you need to know about CRISPR
Related TED Playlist: How does DNA work?
Related NPR Links
Shots: For kids with rare genetic disorders, customized CRISPR treatments offer hope
Shots: A promising genetic treatment tailor-made for a baby born with a rare disorder
TED Radio Hour: How CRISPR is changing the way we grow our food
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