Prof. Doron Lancet CV
Prof. Doron Lancet has a B.Sc. degree in chemistry and physics from the Hebrew University, PhD in Chemical Immunology from Weizmann Institute and postdoctoral training at Harvard and Yale. He established and then headed the Crown Human Genome Center at the Weizmann Institute of Science for 20 years until 2015. Lancet pioneered research on the biochemistry, genetics and evolution of olfaction, including computer models for analyzing affinity distributions in molecular receptor repertoires. He has run a program on deciphering human disease genes using next-generation DNA sequencing. Prof. Lancet and team developed GeneCards, a world-renown web-based compendium of human genes, with affiliated software tools for the phenotype interpretation of genome sequences. In the last 20 years Lancet has in parallel established a novel computer-based kinetic model for prebiotic evolution, with molecular assemblies that store and transfer compositional information, leading to replication and evolution. This unorthodox view constitutes an alternative to the more popular RNA-first scenario for life’s origin. Lancet was awarded the Takasago and Wright Awards in the USA and the Hestrin and Landau Prize in Israel. He is member of the European Molecular Biology organization, and was on the World Human Genome Organization Council until 2012. Lancet is active in public lecturing and writing in Israel and abroad, and wrote a science column for the Israeli main daily Haaretz 1996-2001.