Michael Metzker's Biography

Michael Metzker, President & Chief Executive Officer/Adjunct Associate Professor, Baylor College of Medicine

An innovator for 30 years, Dr. Metzker has focused his research in three areas: next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, sequence variation in diabetes, and HIV-1 transmission between individuals. He started his first company, LaserGen, Inc. in 2002. He is currently an Adjunct Associate Professor of Genetics at Baylor College of Medicine, and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Chemistry at Rice University. Dr. Metzker has served as an expert witness for several HIV criminal cases, presenting a breakthrough method of phylogenetic analysis of HIV-1 DNA sequences. During his career, he has held senior-level research positions with Merck Research Laboratories and Applied Biosystems (now Thermo Fisher). He received his B.S. from the University of California at Davis (1984) and his Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, TX (1996).