Dr. Stephen Ekker

Biography

Stephen C. Ekker serves as a Professor at the Dell Medical School and is the Associate Dean for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a faculty member of the Department of Molecular Biosciences in UT’s College of Natural Sciences. A pioneer in genome engineering, Ekker employs zebrafish and human cells to develop cutting-edge molecular DNA editing tools aimed at understanding the genome and creating new therapeutics. With over two decades of experience in gene editing, he has worked at esteemed institutions including the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, and the Mayo Clinic, where he was previously the dean of the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. He is the founder and inaugural director of the Mayo Clinic Office of Entrepreneurship and a strong advocate for the bench-to-business-to-bedside model of research translation. Throughout his career, Ekker has been continuously funded by the National Institutes of Health and has co-authored 170 scientific publications. He is also the founding president of the Genome Writers Guild and the Zebrafish Disease Models Society. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded Discovery Genomics Inc., which was acquired by Immusoft in 2016, and has worked with various startup ventures focused on gene therapy and animal health.

Research Interests

Experience