Erik Sontheimer

Erik J. Sontheimer is the Pillar Chair in Biomedical Research and Professor and Vice-Chair in the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School in Worcester, Massachusetts.

He conducted his graduate research in the laboratory of Joan Steitz at Yale University, where he uncovered key mechanistic features of pre-mRNA splicing. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago in the laboratory of Dr. Joseph Piccirilli. Before moving to the RNA Therapeutics Institute in 2014, he was a Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Dr. Sontheimer’s laboratory has made fundamental contributions to the fields of RNA interference, CRISPR biology, and genome editing. Among many key discoveries, his group provided the first demonstration that small RNAs known as CRISPR RNAs can target DNA molecules and was one of the first to recognize and describe the transformative potential of CRISPR for biotechnology and human therapeutics. Additional contributions include the co-discovery of naturally occurring off-switches for CRISPR-Cas9, novel Cas enzymes for genome editing, and split prime editing platforms.