Erik Winfree (born September 26, 1969) is an American applied computer scientist, bioengineer, and professor at

California Institute of Technology The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small group of institutes ...

. He is a leading researcher into

DNA computing DNA computing is an emerging branch of unconventional computing which uses DNA, biochemistry, and molecular biology hardware, instead of the traditional electronic computing. Research and development in this area concerns theory, experiments, a ...

and

DNA nanotechnology DNA nanotechnology is the design and manufacture of artificial nucleic acid structures for technological uses. In this field, nucleic acids are used as non-biological engineering materials for nanotechnology rather than as the carriers of genet ...

. In 1998, Winfree in collaboration with

Nadrian Seeman Nadrian C. "Ned" Seeman (December 16, 1945 – November 16, 2021) was an American nanotechnologist and crystallographer known for inventing the field of DNA nanotechnology. Biography Seeman studied biochemistry at the University of Chicago ...

published the creation of two-dimensional lattices of DNA tiles using the "double crossover" motif. These tile-based structures provided the capability to implement DNA computing, which was demonstrated by Winfree and Paul Rothemund in 2004, and for which they shared the 2006

Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology The Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology is an award given by the Foresight Institute for significant advances in nanotechnology. Two prizes are awarded annually, in the categories of experimental and theoretical work. There is also a separate challe ...

. In 1999, he was named to the

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...

Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

TR100 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. He received a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

in 1991 and a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of Postgraduate education, graduate study and original resear ...

from the

in 1998. For his doctoral studies, he enrolled in the

Computation and Neural Systems The Computation and Neural Systems (CNS) program was established at the California Institute of Technology in 1986 with the goal of training PhD students interested in exploring the relationship between the structure of neuron-like circuits/network ...

program at Caltech under advisors

John Hopfield John Joseph Hopfield (born July 15, 1933) is an American physicist and emeritus professor of Princeton University, most widely known for his study of associative neural networks in 1982. He is known for the development of the Hopfield network. ...

and Al Barr. He was a Lewis Thomas Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

. He was a 2000

MacArthur Fellow The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and colloquially called the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to typically between 20 and 30 individuals workin ...

. His father

Arthur Winfree Arthur Taylor Winfree (May 15, 1942 – November 5, 2002) was a theoretical biologist at the University of Arizona. He was born in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. Winfree was noted for his work on the mathematical modeling of biological ...

, a theoretical biologist, was also a

Works

''DNA Based Computers V: Dimacs Workshop DNA Based Computers V June 14–15, 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology''
Editors Erik Winfree, David K. Gifford, AMS Bookstore, 2000,
''Evolution as computation: DIMACS workshop, Princeton, January 1999''
Editors Laura Faye Landweber, Erik Winfree, Springer, 2002,
"DNA Computing by Self-Assembly"
''Ninth Annual Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering'', National Academies Press, 2004,
''Algorithmic Bioprocesses''
Editors

Anne Condon Anne Elizabeth Condon, is an Irish-Canadian computer scientist, professor, and former head of the UBC Computer Science Department, Computer Science Department of the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on computational complexi ...

, David Harel, Joost N. Kok, Arto Salomaa, Erik Winfree, Springer, 2009,

References

External links

*
"Erik Winfree"
, ''Scientific Commons''
AAAS Member Spotlight: Erik Winfree studies the computational components of DNA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Winfree, Erik Living people California Institute of Technology faculty California Institute of Technology alumni University of Chicago alumni Princeton University fellows MacArthur Fellows American computer scientists American bioengineers DNA nanotechnology people 1969 births Recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers