Steve Quake

Steve Quake studied physics (BS 1991) and mathematics (MS 1991) at Stanford University before earning his doctorate in physics from Oxford University (1994) as a Marshall scholar. He then spent two years as a post-doc in Nobel Laureate Steven Chu’s group at Stanford University developing techniques to manipulate single DNA molecules with optical tweezers. In 1996 Quake joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, where he rose through the ranks and was ultimately appointed the Thomas and Doris Everhart Professor of Applied Physics and Physics. Quake moved back to Stanford University in 2004 to help launch a new department in Bioengineering, where he is the Lee Otterson Professor and co-Chair.Quake’s interests lie at the nexus of physics, biology and biotechnology. Over the course of his career he has sought to use the principles of physics to investigate questions in biology and human health. This has often involved the development and application of new technologies for precision measurement.He pioneered the development of Microfluidic Large Scale Integration (LSI), demonstrating the first integrated microfluidic devices with thousands of mechanical valves. This technology is helping to pave the way for large scale automation of biology at the nanoliter scale, and in recent years Quake and his collaborators have used it for applications as diverse as discovering a new drug for hepatitis C, mapping the genomes of unculturable environmental microbes, and measuring gene expression in individual cancer stem cells. Commercial versions of microfludic LSI are now used in hundreds of laboratories around the world for diverse purposes.Quake demonstrated the first successful single molecule DNA sequencing technology, which has been commercially developed and is a leading candidate to deliver the first $1,000 genome. His contributions to genomics also include the first clinical application of next generation sequencing (for non-invasive prenatal diagnostics) and the first measurement of the immune repertoire of an organism. In 2009 he and two co-workers sequenced his genome using the commercial version of the single molecule sequencing technology that he developed, an event that was widely reported in the popular press. Quake received “Career” and “First” awards from the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health in 1997, was named a Packard Fellow in 1999, was in the inaugural class of NIH Director’s Pioneer Awards in 2004, and in 2005 was selected as an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His contributions to the development of new biotechnology at the interface between physics and biology have been recognized by recent awards from the MIT Technology Review Magazine, Forbes, and Popular Science. He is a founder and scientific advisory board chair of Fluidigm, Inc and Helicos Biosciences, Inc (NASDAQ: HLCS).