DREW ENDY, Ph.D.

Dr. Drew Endy is helping to start the new Department of Biological Engineering at MIT.  He is a co-founder of Codon Devices, Inc. and president of the BioBricks Foundation, a not-for-profit organization promoting open access to biological technologies.  He also started and leads the organization of the International Meeting on Synthetic Biology conference series, and advises various government and private organizations on matters related to the ongoing development of biological technologies.

At MIT, Dr. Endy´s lab research has resulted in (a) the first example of refactoring the genome of a natural biological system, (b) an abstraction hierarchy for engineering genetic devices, including a common signal carrier for transcription-based devices, and (c) experiments suggesting that the behavior of natural molecular biological systems is determinable, and perhaps not so stochastic.  His two future research interests are implementing reliable behavior in engineered biological devices, and developing a practical framework for designing reproducing machines whose designs are readily understandable by humans.