chemistry

Rachel Haurwitz

Rachel Haurwitz is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Rachel Haurwitz rather than just read about it. In short: Rachel Elizabeth Haurwitz (born May 20, 1985) is an American biochemist and structural biologist. She is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and president of Caribou Biosciences, a genome editing company.

Key takeaways

Rachel Haurwitz belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Rachel Haurwitz to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Rachel Haurwitz from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Rachel Elizabeth Haurwitz (born May 20, 1985) is an American biochemist and structural biologist. She is the co-founder, chief executive officer, and president of Caribou Biosciences, a genome editing company.

Early life and education Haurwitz was born on May 20, 1985. She grew up in Austin, Texas. Her mother is an elementary school teacher and her father, an environmental journalist. Haurwitz began researching RNA during her undergraduate years. She attended Harvard College where she earned an undergraduate degree. In 2007, she began doctoral studies at University of California, Berkeley. At the age of 21, Haurwitz began working as a graduate student in Jennifer Doudna's laboratory, in 2008 where she completed her doctorate in molecular and cell biology. Haurwitz originally intended on becoming an intellectual property lawyer for biotechnology patents but later chose to continue in science.

Career In 2011, Haurwitz and Doudna co-founded Caribou Biosciences, a gene editing spinout-startup company. Haurwitz is the company's CEO and president. She holds several patents for CRISPR-based technologies. The firm was initially housed in the basement of the building that housed Doudna's laboratory. The company supports the commercialization of CRISPR technology in healthcare and agriculture. Its researchers explore issues in antimicrobial resistance, food scarcity, and vaccine shortages. The company licensed Berkeley's CRISPR patent and deals with agricultural and pharmaceutical companies and research firms. In 2018, Haurwitz announced that the firm was shifting focus on medicine and developing cancer therapies targeting microbes. In July 2021, Caribou Biosciences became a public company through an initial public offering on the Nasdaq that raised $304 million in gross proceeds. Under Haurwitz's leadership, the company advanced CB-010, an allogeneic anti-CD19 CAR-T cell therapy, through the ANTLER Phase 1 clinical trial in relapsed or refractory B cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. In 2024 and 2025, Caribou carried out two rounds of restructuring. In April 2025, the company reduced its workforce by 32 percent and discontinued clinical trials in lupus and acute myeloid leukemia as well as its preclinical research, in order to concentrate on its two lead oncology programs. In November 2025, the company reported positive Phase 1 data for the therapy, by then named vispa-cel, showing efficacy comparable to approved autologous CAR-T cell therapies.

Personal life She is a long-distance runner and is training for a marathon. Haurwitz knits as a hobby.

Recognition In 2021, Haurwitz was selected as a Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst. As part of the program, she attended the annual New Economy Forum held in Singapore, and the Bloomberg New Economy Catalyst Retreat that same year. Haurwitz was named to Fortune's 40 Under 40 list in 2016 and MIT Technology Review's Innovators Under 35 in 2017.

Selected works

Papers Haurwitz, Rachel E.; Jinek, Martin; Wiedenheft, Blake; Zhou, Kaihong; Doudna, Jennifer A. (September 10, 2010). "Sequence- and Structure-Specific RNA Processing by a CRISPR Endonuclease". Science. 329 (5997): 1355–1358. Bibcode:2010Sci...329.1355H. doi:10.1126/science.1192272. PMC 3133607. PMID 20829488. Qi, Lei; Haurwitz, Rachel E; Shao, Wenjun; Doudna, Jennifer A; Arkin, Adam P (September 16, 2012). "RNA processing enables predictable programming of gene expression". Nature Biotechnology. 30 (10): 1002–1006. doi:10.1038/nbt.2355. PMID 22983090. S2CID 1333889.

References

External links Rachel Haurwitz's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Rachel Haurwitz

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Rachel Haurwitz claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Rachel Haurwitz before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Rachel Haurwitz ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Rachel Haurwitz

In research: Rachel Haurwitz appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Rachel Haurwitz in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Rachel Haurwitz is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1985 births, 21st-century American Jews, 21st-century American biochemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Rachel Haurwitz outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Rachel Haurwitz” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Rachel Haurwitz in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Rachel Haurwitz means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Rachel Haurwitz out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Rachel Haurwitz in simple terms?

Why does Rachel Haurwitz matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Rachel Haurwitz?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Rachel Haurwitz.