Dr Kevin Esvelt is a Polymath Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. MIT Professor Kevin M. Esvelt is a Polymath Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. He leads the Sculpting Evolution Group in exploring evolutionary and ecological engineering. The creator of a synthetic ecosystem to rapidly evolve molecular tools, he is best known for inventing CRISPR-based “gene drive” systems capable of single-handedly editing wild species. Esvelt and his colleagues chose to publicly describe the technology and highlight the need for safeguards before testing it and demonstrating reversibility in the laboratory. An outspoken advocate of sharing research plans to accelerate discovery and improve safety, Esvelt has led efforts to ensure that all ecological editing research is not only open but community-guided. His laboratory seeks to safeguard biotechnology against mistrust and misuse by pioneering new ways of visibly working with communities, inventing early-warning systems to reliably detect biological threats, accelerating reliable countermeasure development, and applying cryptographic methods to enable secure and universal DNA synthesis screening.
Dr Kevin M. Esvelt
Position(s)
Polymath Fellow; Leader, Sculpting Evolution Group; Assistant Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab