Dr. Sternberg is an assistant professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at Columbia University in New York City, NY. Sam’s lab explores the biology of CRISPR-Cas systems and transposable elements and develops these systems for genome engineering. He received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and he worked as a Scientist and Group Leader at Caribou Biosciences before joining the Columbia faculty in 2018. In addition to publishing his research in leading journals and speaking internationally, Sam remains actively involved in public outreach and ongoing discussions on the ethical issues surrounding genome editing. Together with his doctoral thesis advisor, Nobel Prize laureate Jennifer Doudna, he co-authored A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, a popular science book about the discovery, development, and applications of CRISPR technology. Sam is the recipient of the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Scaringe Award from the RNA society, the Harold Weintraub Graduate Student Award from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and is a Sloan Fellow, Pew Biomedical Scholar, and Schaefer Research Scholar.