Steven M. Block is an American biophysicist and Professor at Stanford University with a joint appointment in the departments of Biology and Applied Physics. In addition, he is a member of the scientific advisory group JASON, a senior fellow of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and an amateur bluegrass musician. Block received his B.A. and M.A. from Oxford University. He has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (2007) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000), and is a winner of the Max Delbruck Prize of the American Physical Society (2008), as well as the Single Molecule Biophysics Prize of the Biophysical Society (2007). He served as President of the Biophysical Society during 2005-6. His graduate work was completed in the laboratory of Howard Berg at the University of Colorado and Caltech. He received his Ph.D. in 1983 and went on to do postdoctoral research at Stanford. Since that time, Block has held positions at the Rowland Institute for Science, Harvard University, and Princeton University before returning to Stanford in 1999.
David S. Cafiso is an American biochemist and a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on membrane proteins and cell signaling, and is primarily supported by grants from the National Institute of Health.
Alice Yen-Ping Ting is Taiwanese-born American chemist. She is a professor of Genetics, of Biology, and by courtesy, of Chemistry at Stanford University. She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub investigator.
Thomas J. Kelly is an American cancer researcher whose work focuses on the molecular mechanisms of DNA replication. Kelly is director of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, the basic research arm of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He holds the Center's Benno C. Schmidt Chair of Cancer Research.
Markus W. Covert is a researcher and professor of bioengineering at Stanford University who led the simulation of the first organism in software. Covert leads an interdisciplinary lab of approximately 10 graduate students and post-doctoral scholars.
Daniel Herschlag is an American biochemist and Professor of Biochemistry at the Stanford University School of Medicine. His research uses an interdisciplinary approach to advance our understanding of the fundamental behavior of RNA and proteins. He is well known for his application of rigorous kinetic and mechanistic approaches to RNA and protein systems.
Stephen Charles Kowalczykowski is a Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at the University of California at Davis. His research focuses on the biochemistry and molecular biology of DNA repair and homologous recombination. His lab combines fluorescence microscopy, optical trapping and microfluidics to manipulate and visualize single molecules of DNA and the enzymes involved in processing and repairing DNA. He calls this scientific approach, "visual biochemistry". Stephen Kowalczykowski was elected to the American Society for Arts and Science in 2005, the National Academy of Sciences in 2007 and was a Harvey Society Lecturer at Rockefeller University in 2012.
Dana Pe'er is currently the Chair and Professor in Computational and Systems Biology Program at Sloan Kettering Institute, and regarded as one of the leading researchers in computational systems biology. She was selected as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator in September, 2021. Previously, she was a professor at Columbia Department of Biological Sciences. Pe'er's research focuses on understanding the organization, function and evolution of molecular networks, particularly how genetic variations alter the regulatory network and how these genetic variations can cause cancer.
Nils G. Walter, Dr. Ing., is the Francis S. Collins Collegiate Professor of Chemistry, Biophysics, and Biological Chemistry at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Research in the Nils Walter Lab focuses on non-coding RNA through the lens of single molecule techniques. He is the Founding Director of the Single Molecule Analysis in real-Time (SMART) Center at Michigan. In addition, Walter is the Founding Co-Director for the University of Michigan Center for RNA Biomedicine whose mission is to enrich the university’s intellectual and training environment around RNA Biomedicine. He is currently an Associate Director for the Michigan Post-baccalaureate Research Education Program (PREP).
John X. J. Zhang is a professor at Thayer School of Engineering of Dartmouth College, and an investigator in the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Before joining Dartmouth, he was an associate professor with tenure in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Texas of Austin. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, California in 2004, and was a research scientist in systems biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) before joining the faculty at UT Austin in 2005. Zhang is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and a recipient of the 2016 NIH Director's Transformative Research Award.
Lei "Stanley" Qi is an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering, and the Department of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University. Qi led the development of the first catalytically dead Cas9 lacking endonuclease activity (dCas9), which is the basis for CRISPR interference (CRISPRi). His laboratory subsequently developed CRISPR-Genome Organization (CRISPR-GO).
Kanaka Rajan is a neuroscientist and Associate Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Friedman Brain Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. Rajan trained in engineering, biophysics, and neuroscience, and has pioneered novel methods and models to understand how the brain processes sensory information. Her research seeks to understand how important cognitive functions — such as learning, remembering, and deciding — emerge from the cooperative activity of multi-scale neural processes, and how those processes are affected by various neuropsychiatric disease states. The resulting integrative theories about the brain bridge neurobiology and artificial intelligence.
Katherine Snowden Pollard is the Director of the Gladstone Institute of Data Science and Biotechnology and a professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). She is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She was awarded Fellowship of the International Society for Computational Biology in 2020 and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2021 for outstanding contributions to computational biology and bioinformatics.
Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen is a Thomas D. and Virginia W. Cabot Career Development Associate Professor at MIT in the Department of Chemistry.
Nicole C. Rust is an American neuroscientist, psychologist, and an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies visual perception and visual recognition memory. She is recognized for significant advancements in experimental psychology and neuroscience.
Jason Ben Shear is an American chemist and expert in biomaterials and bioengineering. He is currently Professor of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin. Shear has been considered one of the pioneers of two-photon photolithography.
Bianxiao Cui is the current Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor of Chemistry and a fellow of the Stanford Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University.
Julie Biteen is a Canadian-born American chemist who is professor of chemistry and biophysics at the University of Michigan. Her research considers the development of imaging systems for biological systems. She was named the Stanford University Sessler Distinguished Alumni Lecturer in 2021.
Amy Rowat is an Associate Professor of biophysics at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) and the first Marcie H. Rothman Presidential Chair in Food Studies. Her scientific research focuses on understanding the physical and mechanical properties of cells in diseases such as cancer. She also organizes public events on the science of cooking.
Yi Tang is a biochemist and professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include the discovery, functional characterization, and engineering of natural product biosynthetic enzymes. He was awarded the 2014 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry.
