Stephen Quake
| Stephen Quake | |
|---|---|
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| Nationality | American |
| Fields | biophysics, genomics |
| Institutions | Stanford University |
| Alma mater | Stanford University, Oxford University |
| Academic advisors | Robin Stinchcombe, Steven Chu |
| Known for | Microfluidics, Genomics |
| Notable awards | Lemelson–MIT Prize (2012) |
Stephen Quake is an American scientist, inventor and entrepreneur. He earned his B.S. in Physics and M.S. in Mathematics from Stanford in 1991 and his D.Phil. in Physics from Oxford University in 1994 as a Marshall Scholar. His thesis research was in statistical mechanics and the effects of knots on polymers. He did his postdoctoral work at Stanford in single molecules biophysics with Steven Chu. Quake joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology at the age of 26, where he rose through the ranks and was ultimately appointed the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics. He moved back to Stanford University in 2005 to help launch a new department in Bioengineering, where he is now the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Quake has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, the American Physical Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Human Frontiers of Science Nakasone Prize, the MIT-Lemelson Prize for Innovation,[1] the Raymond and Beverly Sackler International Prize in Biophysics, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, the American Society of Microbiology’s Promega Biotechnology Award, and the Royal Society of Chemistry Publishing’s Pioneer of Miniaturization Award. He has founded or co-founded several companies, including Fluidigm, Helicos Biosciences, Verinata Health, Quanticel Pharmaceuticals, Moleculo, Cellular Research and Immumetrix.
Quake is a leader in experimental biophysics known for his pioneering new approaches to biological measurement. He has made many contributions to the field of microfluidics, including the invention of microfluidic large scale integration, and developed applications of microfluidics to areas as diverse as structural biology, drug discovery, and molecular affinity measurements. He has also made numerous contributions to the field of genomics, including the first single molecule DNA sequencing, techniques to perform single cell gene expression and genome sequencing, the development of non-invasive prenatal diagnostics to replace amniocentesis, prenatal genome sequencing, non-invasive tests for heart transplant rejection, and the development of approaches to sequence and analyze an individual's immune system. He was one of the first handful of people in the world to see their own genomes, and his genome was the subject of clinical annotation by a large team in the Stanford Hospital.