Stanford University - 8:00 AM Tuesday

“Single Cell, Single Molecule Genomics”

Stephen Quake is a brilliant scientist, a prolific inventor of biological automation tools, and a successful entrepreneur. His pioneering inventions and discoveries are revolutionizing biological automation, genome analysis, and personalized medicine. He invented Microfluidic Large Scale Integration, demonstrating the first microfluidic devices with thousands of integrated mechanical valves, and founded Fluidigm to commercialize this technology. Quake also performed the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing experiments, founded Helicos Biosciences to commercialize this technology, and sequenced his own genome with their instrument. He was one of the first half dozen people in the world to see their own genome, and the only one to have invented the sequencer used to do it. Quake is also a leader in applying genomic technologies to personalized clinical diagnostics.

Biography

Stephen Quake studied physics (BS 1991) and mathematics (MS 1991) at Stanford University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and won the Firestone Prize for Undergraduate Research. His senior thesis research on the manipulation of single DNA molecules with optical tweezers won the Apker Award (1991) from the American Physical Society, an honor given to the best undergraduate physics research nationwide. Quake also won a Marshall scholarship and a National Science Foundation graduate fellowship, which he used to earn a doctorate in physics from Oxford University (1994). His thesis research was in statistical mechanics and the effects of knots on polymers. He then spent two years as a post-doc in Nobel Laureate Steven Chu's group at Stanford University continuing his research in single molecule biophysics.

Quake joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 1996, where he rose through the ranks and was ultimately appointed the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics. At Caltech, Quake received “Career” and “First” awards from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, and was named a Packard Fellow. These awards supported a research program that began with single molecule biophysics and soon expanded to include the invention of microfluidic large scale integration, and its application to biological automation. He moved back to Stanford University in 2005 to help launch a new department in Bioengineering, where he is now the Lee Otterson Professor and co-Chair. Quake has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2006.

Quake’s contributions to the development of new biotechnology at the interface between physics and biology have been recognized by awards from the MIT Technology Review Magazine, Nature Biotechnology, Forbes, and Popular Science. He won one of the inaugural NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards, is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and a fellow of the American Physical Society. He has given numerous plenary, keynote and invited lectures at universities and scientific conferences around the world and in 2009 he was a guest science blogger for the New York Times.

Quake has published more than 100 research papers in numerous leading scientific journals, including Science, Nature, and P.N.A.S. His publications have been cited more than 8,000 times and his h-index is 45. His paper describing the invention of the micromechanical valve that forms the basis of microfluidic large scale integration has been cited more than 1,000 times, and his top 20 most cited papers all have more than 100 citations each. The practical applications of his research have led to 70 issued U.S. patents, numerous international patents, and many pending applications.

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