John Doench, Ph.D.

John Doench is the director of research and development in the Genetic Perturbation Platform of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he is also an institute scientist. In that capacity, he provides expert guidance on the design, execution, and analysis of genetic screens. He has contributed to numerous publications in fields such as infectious disease, cancer biology, and immunology, highlighting both his commitment to team-based science and ability to mentor and guide scientists from diverse backgrounds on the critical principles of genetic screens.

Additionally, Doench leads a group focused on the development of functional genomic techniques, first with RNAi and more recently with CRISPR technology. Here, his team demonstrated the potential of genetic screens with CRISPR and has since developed leading bioinformatics tools and screening libraries to enable community-wide usage of this powerful technology. The CRISPick web portal, for example, has been accessed once every seven minutes since its launch in 2014 and their genome-wide CRISPR libraries have been distributed by Addgene over 3,000 times.

Doench received the Broad Institute Excellence Award in Collaboration in 2013 and was named as the Merkin Institute Fellow in the same year. In 2018 he received the Broad Institute Award. Doench also serves as chair of professional scientists at the Broad.

Prior to joining the Broad in 2009, Doench did his postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School, received his Ph.D. from the biology department at MIT, working in Phil Sharp’s lab, and majored in history at Hamilton College.