The Ekker lab uses zebrafish in vivo and human cells in vitro to develop new molecular DNA editing tools to understand our genome and for new therapeutics with a focus on rare disease. Ekker is leading the development of key innovation and entrepreneurship education and applications within Dell Medical School and the University of Texas Austin campus. Ekker has been gene editing for three decades at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Johns Hopkins University, University of Minnesota and Mayo Clinic. He was until recently the Dean of the Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. Ekker in an inventor, has been continuously funded by the NIH for over two decades, has co-authored over 170 scientific publications, and has been the founding President of the Genome Writers Guild non-profit international genome engineering society and President of the Zebrafish Disease Models Society. Ekker was founder and inaugural Director of the Mayo Clinic Office of Entrepreneurship and is a strong advocate of the bench-to-business-to-bedside model of translation. As an entrepreneur, Ekker co-founded his first company Discovery Genomics Inc, which was acquired by Immusoft in 2016 for key technology that is now conducting first-in-class human gene therapy based on programmed B cells. Ekker was the scientific advisor for Opentrons Labworks as that startup went from accelerator to unicorn. Ekker is the scientific founder of Primera Therapeutics to develop the first therapies for patients with mitochondrial disease. As CEO of LifEngine Technologies Inc, Ekker is a scientific co-founder, investor and Director of LifEngine Animal Health (LEAH) Laboratories as it focuses on making new therapies for companion animals and their humans, the first gene editing company out of the prestigious Y Combinator startup incubator.