FORA.tv Speaker - Drew Endy

Drew Endy is a synthetic biologist. He was a junior fellow for 3 years and later an assistant professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT. As of September 2008, he continued his research and teaching as an assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. Silicon Valley's concentration of computer scientists and engineers, in addition to Stanford's broad focus on engineering as well as ethics and the humanities, are believed to be the main reason for his move according to press reports. Additionally, his fiancee Christina Smolke has also recently made the move from the California Institute of Technology to Stanford. With Thomas Knight, Gerald Jay Sussman, and other researchers at MIT, he is working on synthetic biology and the engineering of standardized biological components, devices, and parts, collectively known as BioBricks. Endy is one of several founders of the Registry of Standard Biological Parts, and invented an abstraction hierarchy for integrated genetic systems. Endy is also known for his opposition to limited ownership and support of free access to genetic information. He has been one of the early promoters of open source biology, and helped start the Biobricks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that will work to support open-source biology. He is also a co-founder of Codon Devices, a biotechnology startup company that is aiming to commercialize DNA synthesis. With their proprietary BioFAB platform, Codon Devices produces the DNA or protein sequences anybody orders.