Seth Shipman

Seth Shipman is an Associate Professor at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) within the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences. He holds a joint appointment as an Associate Investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology, where his research intersects molecular biotechnology with neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disease studies. His work emphasizes pharmacogenomics, genomics, and therapeutic bioengineering, leveraging DNA as a programmable biological polymer for data storage and targeted therapeutics.

• Education: PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics (2012), University of California San Francisco

Dr. Shipman's research focuses on overcoming technical barriers in disease understanding and treatment through molecular engineering. His lab specializes in CRISPR-Cas systems, retron gene editors, and DNA-based cellular recording technologies. Key areas include neurodevelopmental mechanisms, progressive neurodegeneration, and context-specific gene therapies.

Scientific awards highlight his contributions: NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2020), Pew Biomedical Scholar (2020), and recognition in ScienceNews as a top scientist (2019). His work has been featured in journals like Nature, Nature Biotechnology, and Science, with recent publications analyzing retron systems for genome editing and transcriptional recording in E. coli.

• Notable Awards:
  • NIH Director’s New Innovator Award (2020)
  • Pew Biomedical Scholar (2020)
  • ScienceNews SN 10: Scientists to Watch (2019)
  • DARPA Riser (2018)

The Shipman Lab develops innovative tools like CRISPR-Cas encoding for digital movie storage in bacterial genomes (2017) and retron arrays for multi-site genome editing (2024). Their work bridges synthetic biology and clinical applications, particularly for diseases involving cellular change dynamics.