Jérôme completed his Masters at ETH Zurich and obtained a PhD from Cambridge where he won the Max Perutz prize for outstanding PhD thesis at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC-LMB) and was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship from Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent a year as a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley prior to joining GBI.    

Jérôme’s work to date has developed rapid ways to build mega-basepair (Mbp)-scale DNA sequences from 100kbp precursors to accelerate E. coli genome synthesis and provide a foundation for building the giga-basepair scale genomes of human cells, crops and animals.  He also developed an approach to alter the genetic code used in organisms with synthetic genomes so that synthetic life cannot exchange genetic information with natural life; this approach may be key to unlocking the safe use of engineered organisms in the human body (i.e. safe therapeutic cells) and the biosphere, such as microbes for mineral extraction and bioremediation.  

Jérôme’s research at GBI focuses on genome synthesis and genetic isolation.