Hamilton O. Smith, M.D.

Dr. Hamilton Smith is Co-Chief Scientific Officer at SGI and Scientific Director of the Synthetic Biology team at the J. Craig Venter Institute. Hamilton received the 1978 Nobel Prize for his work on the discovery of restriction enzymes, which are essential tools used in the field of recombinant DNA technology. He is widely considered one of the experts in DNA library construction and DNA manipulation techniques. Hamilton was formerly the senior director of DNA Resources at Celera Genomics. Prior to joining Celera, he joined the scientific team at The Institute for Genomic Research, a position he held after leaving the Johns Hopkins University where he was professor of molecular biology and genetics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.