Jonathan Rothberg

Early life

Rothberg was born in New Haven, Connecticut, to Lillian Rothberg and Henry Rothberg, a chemical engineer. Prior to Rothberg's birth, his parents founded Laticrete International, Inc. a family-owned manufacturer of products for the installation of tile and stone. As a child Jonathan went on sales calls with his father. Rothberg's family laid the foundation for his scientific career.

Rothberg earned a BS in chemical engineering with an option in biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985. He then went on to earn an MS, MPhil, and PhD in biology from Yale University. Rothberg himself holds more than 100 patents.

Personal life

Rothberg and his wife Bonnie, a physician who also holds a Ph.D. in epidemiology from Yale, have five children, whom Rothberg often refers to in his speeches. In 2002, the couple started the nonprofit Rothberg Institute for Childhood Diseases which works on treatments for tuberous sclerosis, a rare disease that affects one of their children. The institute ran a distributed computing project called Community TSC until April 2009. The TSC project was based on technology known as the Drug Design and Optimization Lab (D2OL), which the institute sponsored through 2009, to use volunteers' personal computers to model interactions of drug candidates with their target molecules. Rothberg sponsors the Rothberg Catalyzer Prize at four universities: Carnegie Mellon University, Yale University, Brown University, and University of Pennsylvania. Rothberg had his own version of Stonehenge, which he calls the Circle of Life, built near his home in Guilford, CT, using 700 tons of granite imported from Norway. Interested in wine-making, he acquired Chamard Vineyards in nearby Clinton, CT. Rothberg owns a yacht called Gene Machine, which is equipped with a lab on board, and its support vessel, Gene Chaser.

Career

In 2011, Rothberg founded Butterfly Network after seeing a talk by MIT physicist Max Tegmark, who was becoming fascinated by artificial intelligence. Rothberg brought in one of Tegmark's smartest students, Nevada Sanchez, a Hertz Fellow and co-founder of the company who was named among Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2015. Butterfly Network sells a hand-held ultrasound imaging device that connects to an iPhone, called the iQ. The core technology is a silicon chip, contrasting with other ultrasound devices that use piezoelectric crystals. The use of silicon makes the device far cheaper to manufacture. The iQ received 13 different device clearances from the Food and Drug Administration. The iQ sells for just over $2,000, and is now commercially available. In September, 2018, Butterfly Network raised $250 million from investors Fidelity, the Gates Foundation, and Fosun Pharma at an estimated $1.25 billion valuation. In February 2021 Butterfly Network was publicly listed on the NYSE under the ticker $BFLY.