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The Center for Translational Vision Research Distinguished Speaker Series, also known as "Friday Seminars" showcases innovative research across the world. The seminar series has now been expanded to include lectures by experts on topics ranging from Ophthalmology, Genetics, Biochemistry, Neurobiology, Imaging, Computational Sciences to Novel Ophthalmic Treatments.
All talks are hybrid. You can join us in person at
You can also join us by zoom. Zoom link and information are on your right and in the calendar links above.
Learn More About the Distinguished Speaker Series
Sam was born and raised in Lancaster, PA. He earned his B.A. in biochemistry from Columbia University in 2007, where he trained with Professor Ruben Gonzalez, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2014, under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Professor Jennifer Doudna. He was awarded graduate student fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense, and received the Scaringe Award from the RNA Society and the Harold Weintraub Graduate Student Award from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. After a brief postdoc and book writing stint, Sam spent a year working at Caribou Biosciences, a Bay Area biotech start-up focusing on genome engineering applications, as a Scientist and Group Leader of Technology Development. He started his independent career in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia in February, 2018, where he was a Sloan Research Fellow in Chemistry and Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. He is the recent recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award and the NSF CAREER Award, and he was named an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 2024.
Sam's doctoral and postdoctoral research focused on the mechanism of nucleic acid targeting by RNA-guided bacterial immune systems (CRISPR–Cas) and on the development of these systems for genome engineering applications. His work has been published in the journals Nature, Science, and Cell, and been covered in The New York Times, Science News, The Scientist, and various other news outlets. His lab employs a range of biochemical, biophysical, genetics, molecular biology, and structural techniques to investigate CRISPR–Cas and transposon biology, with an eye towards applying mechanistic knowledge for genome engineering technology development.