Joe Davis

Joe Davis (b. 04 Dec 1950): B.A. Creative Arts, Mt Angel College, Mt. Angel OR, 1973. Undergraduate work (laser art) at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ; University of Cincinnati Medical Center Laser Laboratory (1972-74). Lecturer/Research Fellow, MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies (1981-1990); Research Affiliate, Alexander Rich Laboratory, MIT Department of Biology (1990-current); Research Associate, McLuhan Program, University of Toronto (1995 – 2008); Artist Scientist, George Church Laboratory, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School (2010-current); Visiting Scholar, University of Washington (January 2011 – March 2011). Research in areas that include lasers and laser fabrication, optoacoustics, microscopy, molecular biology, microbiology, and bioinformatics for the production of genetic databases and new biological art forms. Helped to pioneer fields in art and molecular biology and carried out several widely recognized contributions to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Created large-scale, permanent public art (sculpture/fountain/pedestrian lights) in Kendall Sq., Cambridge MA (1989). Rockefeller Fellow (1986 and 2008). Awarded “Golden Nica” in Hybrid Arts, Ars Electronica (2012). Organized current international consortium to sequence the genome of Malus sieversii, a wild progenitor of domestic apples (2013) and continuing with collaborators at Harvard Medical School and elsewhere to clone the progenitor apple genome with an English language version of Wikipedia.

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