Pete Estep

Founder and Chairman, InnerSpace Foundation

Pete Estep is a graduate of Cornell University, where he earned a B.S. degree and performed neuroscience research as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute undergraduate scholar. He earned a Ph.D. in Genetics from Harvard Medical School performing research in the laboratory of genomics pioneer Dr. George Church. He is a co-founder and former CEO of the longevity research biotechnology company Longenity, Inc., and is an adviser to the Personal Genome Project, an "open-source" genome project based at Harvard Medical School. He is an inventor of several technologies including DNA chip-based readout of transposon-based selections and universal DNA protein-binding microarrays (PBMs).

In 2008, he started the InnerSpace Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and supporting neuroengineering approaches for the enhancement of memory and learning. A founding philosophy of The InnerSpace Foundation is that the shortest and most efficient path to solving humanity's most serious problems--including providing complete and lasting cures for the most diseased and disabled--is through widespread improvement of memory and mind. The InnerSpace Foundation engages in various activities to promote and fund neuroscience and neuroengineering research, and toward this end, a primary function of the foundation will be to organize and run The IF Prize, prize-based neuroengineering competitions open to researchers around the world.