Jonathan M. Rothberg

Jonathan Marc Rothberg (born 1963) is an American scientist and entrepreneur.

Jonathan Marc Rothberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut to Lillian Rothberg and Henry Rothberg, a chemical engineer. Prior to Rothberg's birth, his parents founded Laticrete International, Inc. a family-owned manufacturer of products for the installation of tile and stone. Rothberg's family established the foundation for his scientific career.

Rothberg earned a BS in Chemical Engineering with an option in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. He went on to Yale University and earned an MS, M.Phil., and Ph.D. in biology. His thesis at Yale focused on decoding a gene called slit responsible for wiring the nervous system. This work resulted in a cover article in the journal Cell in 1988.

While a graduate student at Yale in 1991, he founded CuraGen, one of the first genomics companies. CuraGen focused on how the proteins encoded in a genome function together, and published the first global proteomic maps of a eukaryotic cell and a metazoan organism (featured on the covers of Nature and Science) and developed drugs for the treatment of metastatic skin and breast cancer. However, after never bringing a drug to market, CellDex Therapeutics acquired CuraGen in 2009 and reduced it to only five employees by October.

In 2000 454 Life Sciences was founded as a subsidiary of Curagen; Rothberg was the CEO of Curagen at the time. It was acquired by Roche Diagnostics in 2007 then closed down by Roche in 2013 after other approaches to sequencing rendered the underlying technology noncompetitive.

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