I think science and entrepreneurship are related in a way. I've often felt that when you start an academic research lab, there are some interesting parallels to starting a company. In a similar way, you have an idea, something you want to pursue, you're attracting people to come and work on that idea, you're building a team. I didn't think about it that way when I was starting my academic lab, to be honest, but I see it more now that way. That really my lab is like a team and people are collaborating with each other on projects and sharing certain ideas that they want to work on and achieve together. I think that I've come to appreciate that entrepreneurial work is important to foster in our students, to try to encourage them. And what does it mean even to be an entrepreneur? To me, it really is all about somebody who has an idea and they really want to see it come to practical fruition.

And how do you do that? Sometimes it's an academic lab, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it just makes more sense to build a team that has the kind of funding that you can only get really from investors. So again, I find that these days I often, when I'm working with people in my laboratory, I find that some of them, not all but some of them, are very naturally inclined towards entrepreneurship. And when they are, I try to find out, learn about that. How do they think about that? And if they want to pursue their ideas in the form of a company, I try to help them do that.

I think the world of entrepreneurs has traditionally been more male-dominated, even now. I would say that's definitely true.

Dr. Jennifer Doudna is a biochemist and 2020 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry. She is also the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health sciences as well as a professor of biochemistry, biophysics, and structural biology. Her work focuses on RNA interference and gene editing.

In 1985, she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in biochemistry from Pomona College and in 1989 received her PhD in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology from Harvard Medical School. From 1991 to 1994, she was a Lucille P. Markey post-doctoral scholar in Biomedical science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She also received fellowships from the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

From 1994 to 2001, Dr. Doudna was an associate professor and full professor at Yale University. In 2002, Dr. Douda accepted a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology position at the University of California, Berkeley. She has also been researching with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997, and her work with CRISPR-Cas9 and other genome-engineering techniques has led to breakthroughs in human and agricultural genomics research. At the Doudna Lab, researchers focus on determining mechanisms of novel genome editing tools for in vitro usage in plants and mammals as well as anti-CRISPR agents.

Dr. Doudna has received numerous awards for her work including the 2020 Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a method for genome editing, the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the 2016 Japan Prize, the 2019 Welfare Betterment Prize, the 2020 Wolf Prize in Medicine, and the 2025 National Medal of Technology and Innovation. She is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors, and a member of the Royal Society.