Stephen Quake is the Chief Scientific Advisor of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, supporting CZI’s mission to cure, prevent and manage all diseases by the end of the century. His contributions to science are varied and include the invention of the biological equivalent of the integrated circuit, the development of whole-organism cell atlases, and the creation of diagnostics that have made medicine safer by replacing invasive biopsies such as amniocentesis with simple blood tests.
He has received numerous awards for his discoveries and has been elected to several scientific honorary societies, including the Royal Society, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, and the National Academy of Inventors. He has published more than 300 papers that have been cumulatively cited more than 100,000 times.
Quake also holds a faculty position at Stanford University, where he is the Lee Otterson Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics. Previously, he was the Head of Science at CZI (2022–2025) and founding co-president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub San Francisco (2016–2022), an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (2006–2016), and professor at the California Institute of Technology (1996–2005).
