Abstract
Life is orchestrated by programmable biomolecules – DNA, RNA, and proteins – interacting within complex biological circuits. To address longstanding challenges to biological research and medicine, we are working to engineer programmable molecular instruments capable of reading out and regulating the state of endogenous biological circuitry within intact organisms, exploiting the very programmability that biological organisms exploit themselves.
Biography
Niles Pierce is the 74th Eastman Visiting Professor at the University of Oxford and Professor of Applied & Computational Mathematics and Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology. He graduated as valedictorian from Princeton University in 1993 with a BSE in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, then went on to complete a DPhil in Applied Mathematics in 1997 as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. Arriving at Caltech as a Senior Postdoctoral Scholar in Computational Molecular Biology in 1998, he joined the Caltech faculty in 2000, and served as Executive Officer of the Department of Bioengineering during its formative years from 2007–2013. He has received the Fox Prize in Numerical Analysis, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching. In 2014, he was a Christensen Fellow at St Catherine’s College, University of Oxford, and was one of two engineers in the United States to be named a Guggenheim Fellow.
Niles is working to engineer small conditional DNAs and RNAs that function as programmable molecular instruments, enabling readout and regulation of the state of endogenous biological circuitry within intact organisms. In this pursuit, his research group has contributed to the founding of the new discipline of molecular programming, developing molecular mechanisms, design principles, and computational algorithms that enable the rational design and construction of dynamic molecular devices.
Niles is a classically trained trumpeter, performing with the Princeton University Orchestra and Jazz Ensemble and the Caltech Concert Band and Jazz Band, a competitive football player, twice winning Oxford Cuppers as a member of the House 1st XI, and a baseball enthusiast, who enjoys coaching a new generation of football and baseball players.