Stephen Ronald Quake (born 1969) is an American physicist, inventor, and entrepreneur.

Education and career

Quake earned his B.S. in physics and

M.S. A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...

in mathematics from

Stanford Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth governor of and th ...

in 1991 and his D.Phil. in theoretical physics from

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

in 1994 as a

Marshall Scholar The Marshall Scholarship is a postgraduate scholarship for "intellectually distinguished young Americans ndtheir country's future leaders" to study at any university in the United Kingdom. It is considered among the most prestigious scholarshi ...

. His thesis research was in statistical mechanics and the effects of knots on polymers. He did his postdoctoral work at Stanford in single-molecule biophysics with

Steven Chu Steven ChuCornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

. Quake was elected a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

in 2013 for achievements in single-cell analysis and large-scale integration of microfluidic devices. He has also been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, the American Physical Society, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the recipient of numerous international awards, including the Human Frontiers of Science Nakasone Prize, the Jacob Heskel Gabbay Award (2015), the

Lemelson–MIT Prize The Lemelson–MIT Program awards several prizes yearly to inventors in the United States. The largest is the Lemelson–MIT Prize which was endowed in 1994 by Jerome H. Lemelson, funded by the Lemelson Foundation, and is administered through the ...

for Innovation, 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 known for his new approaches to biological measurement. He has made contributions to the field of

microfluidics Microfluidics refers to a system that manipulates a small amount of fluids (10−9 to 10−18 liters) using small channels with sizes of ten to hundreds of micrometres. It is a multidisciplinary field that involves molecular analysis, molecular bi ...

, including the invention of microfluidic large scale integration, and developed applications of microfluidics to structural biology, drug discovery, and molecular affinity measurements. He has also made contributions to the field of

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of molecular biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, ...

, including 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. His genome was the subject of clinical annotation by a large team in the Stanford Hospital. Since 2022, Quake has been the head of the

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is an organization established and owned by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan with an investment of 99 percent of the couple's wealth from their Facebook shares over their lifetim ...

Science division. He was appointed a Foreign Member of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

in 2025.

Relationship with He Jiankui

Quake is also known as a former postdoctoral adviser to

He Jiankui He Jiankui ( zh, s=贺建奎, p=Hè Jiànkuí ; born 1984) is a Chinese biophysicist known for his controversial first use of genome editing in humans. He served as associate professor of biology at the Southern University of Science and ...

, the controversial scientist who purportedly created the world's first gene-edited babies. Quake claimed he had told him not to proceed with the experiment.

References

External links

Stephen Quake's group at Stanford University
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Quake, Stephen Living people 1969 births Stanford University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Stanford University School of Engineering faculty Stanford University School of Medicine faculty Howard Hughes Medical Investigators American biophysicists American bioengineers Marshall Scholars Members of the National Academy of Medicine Foreign members of the Royal Society