Dr. Eric Eisenstadt has been Vice President for Research at the J. Craig Venter Institute (prior The Institute for Genomic Research) since August 2005. Prior to his appointment, Dr. Eisenstadt was a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) from1999 to 2005 where he developed and managed basic and applied interdisciplinary research programs in various biotechnology areas such as genomic sequencing of pathogens, neurobiology, synthetic biology and protein design. He was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service upon departing DARPA in July 2005. Dr. Eisenstadt also served as a Program Officer at the Office of Naval Research (1988-1999) where he developed and managed basic research programs in marine biotechnology, systems biology, and biomineralization. Prior to government service, Dr. Eisenstadt was a member of the faculty of the Harvard University School of Public Health in the Department of Microbiology and the Laboratory of Toxicology where he taught and investigated mechanisms of mutagenesis and DNA repair.

Dr. Eisenstadt earned his bachelor's degree and doctorate in biology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Following his graduate studies, he completed a one-year NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Université de Paris, Orsay, and a two-year Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Universität zu Köln. Dr. Eisenstadt was also a NIH Staff Fellow at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, NINDS.