Karen Nelson

National Academy of Sciences operates as a private, nongovernmental institution that advises on issues related to science and technology. It provides independent, objective analysis and advice and conducts other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions. The firm also encourages education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase public understanding in matters of science. The company was founded on March 3, 1863 and is headquartered in Washington, DC.

J. Craig Venter Institute, Inc. operates as a not-for-profit genomics research organization. It conducts research on human genomic medicine, infectious diseases, plant genomics, microbial and environmental genomics, synthetic biology and biological energy, bioinformatics, and software engineering. The firm also develops a suite of software packages for sequencing/assembly, gene finding, annotation, genome analysis, microarray data analysis and normalization, protein expression quantitation, computational management, and cloud-based bioinformatics. The company was founded by J. Craig Venter and Hamilton O. Smith in October 2006 and is headquartered in Rockville, MD.