Dr. Erik Winfree

"DNA as a Universal Substrate for Chemical Kinetics"

Abstract: 
"Formal chemical reaction networks (CRNs) provide an elegant standard language for describing and analyzing well-mixed systems of interacting particles.  Taking a complementary approach, I will discuss recent work showing how CRNs can be used prescriptively, rather than descriptively, as a programming language for creating complex nucleic acid systems. Joint work with David Soloveichik, Georg Seelig, Matt Cook, Shuki Bruck, and Lulu Qian."

 About the Speaker:

"Erik Winfree is an Associate Professor in Computer Science, Computation & Neural Systems and Bioengineering at Caltech.  His research concerns the theory and engineering of autonomous biochemical algorithms using in vitro systems of DNA and enzymes, including programmable DNA self-assembly, DNA and RNA conformational switches and devices, and RNA transcriptional circuits. Such systems are envisioned as embedded information-processing and control for bottom-up nanofabrication, nanorobotics, biochemical diagnostics, and other biochemical processes.  Winfree is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology (2006), the NSF PECASE/CAREER Award (2001), the ONR Young Investigators Award (2001), a MacArthur Fellowship (2000), Tulip prize in DNA Computing, and MIT Technology Review's first TR100 list of "top young innovators" (1999). Prior to joining the faculty at Caltech in 1999, Winfree was a Lewis Thomas Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology at Princeton, and a Visiting Scientist at the MIT AI Lab. Winfree received a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Chicago in 1991, and a Ph.D. in Computation & Neural Systems from Caltech in 1998."