The J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) is a non-profit genomics research institute founded by J. Craig Venter, Ph.D. in October 2006. The Institute was the result of consolidating four organizations: the Center for the Advancement of Genomics, The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), the Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives, and the J. Craig Venter Science Foundation Joint Technology Center. It has facilities in Rockville, Maryland and La Jolla, California.

The Institute studies the societal implications of genomics in addition to genomics itself. The Institute's research involves genomic medicine; environmental genomic analysis; clean energy; synthetic biology; and ethics, law, and economics. The Institute employs over 400 people, including Nobel laureate Hamilton Smith.

The pre-history of JCVI is deeply entwined with the race to sequence the human genome. Craig Venter was a researcher at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and had started The Institute for Genomic Research, a nonprofit private research institute, in 1992 to work on various sequencing projects, including the Human Genome Project (HGP). Among the various accomplishments of TIGR was the first complete genomic sequencing of a free living organism, Haemophilus influenzae, in 1995. This used a shotgun sequencing technique pioneered earlier, but which had never been used for a whole bacterium until TIGR's project.

John Craig Venter (born October 14, 1946) is an American biologist and entrepreneur. He is known for being one of the first to sequence the human genome and for creating the first cell with a synthetic genome. Venter founded Celera Genomics, TIGR (The Institute for Genomic Research) and the JCVI (J. Craig Venter Institute), and is now working at JCVI to create synthetic biological organisms. He was listed on Time magazine's 2007 and 2008 Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2010, the British magazine New Statesman listed Craig Venter at 14th in the list of "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures 2010".

Venter was born in Salt Lake City, Utah. In his youth, he did not take his education seriously, preferring to spend his time on the water in boats or surfing.^{[citation needed]} According to his biography, A Life Decoded, he was said to never be a terribly engaged student, having Cs and Ds on his eighth-grade report cards.

Although he was against the Vietnam War, Venter was drafted and enlisted in the United States Navy where he worked in the intensive-care ward of a field hospital. While in Vietnam, he attempted to commit suicide by swimming out to sea, but changed his mind more than a mile out. Being confronted with wounded, maimed, and dying soldiers on a daily basis instilled in him a desire to study medicine — although he later switched to biomedical research.

Scott Lee Peterson (born October 24, 1972) is an American murderer convicted of killing his wife, Laci Peterson, and their unborn son in Modesto, California, in 2002. Peterson's arrest and subsequent trial received significant American news media coverage until 2005, when he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. He remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison while his case is on appeal to the Supreme Court of California. He maintains his innocence.

Peterson was born in San Diego, California, to Lee Arthur Peterson (born May 9, 1939) and his wife, the former Jacqueline Helen Latham (born September 16, 1943). Peterson's father worked for a trucking company, and later owned a crate-packaging business. His mother owned a boutique in La Jolla, California, called The Put On.

Peterson attended the University of San Diego High School (now Cathedral Catholic High School) and studied briefly at Arizona State University and Cuesta College before transferring to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, where he graduated with a B.A. in agricultural business in 1997. He worked in a San Luis Obispo cafe as a waiter while attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, when he met Laci Denise Rocha. The couple married in August 1997.