Chris Mason

Dr. Christopher Mason is the WorldQuant Professor of Genomics and Computational Biomedicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, where he is also the Director of the Initiative for Quantitative Prediction, Founder of the Space Omics and Medical Atlas, and Director of the Cornell Aerospace Medicine Biobank. He is also co-Founder and global director at Biotia, Founder of the MetaSUB Consortium, and Chair of BioAstra. He has written 4 books (including The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds and The Age of Prediction) and >400 peer-reviewed papers, featured on the covers of Nature, Science, and Cell, as well as legal briefs cited by U.S. District Courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dr. Mason and his lab develop and deploy computational and experimental methodologies to identify the functional genetic elements of the human genome and metagenome. The Mason lab performs research in three main areas: (1) clinical genetics, including molecular profiling of aggressive cancers, unusual diseases, and astronauts, (2) computational biology, including new biochemical and computational techniques in DNA/RNA sequencing and DNA/RNA base modifications, and (3) genome engineering for new cell, genome, and microbiome modifications. Overall, the lab aims to better understand the functional elements of the human genome and metagenome, such that we can begin to repair or re-engineer these genetic networks for ameliorating disease and lay the foundation to enable long-term human survival.