Faculty and Research

Biotechnology

Biology background picture

The Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University applies engineering principles to the design of pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and biotechnology products, with the goal of dramatically improving human health. Our research efforts leverage molecular-level insight and fundamental biological understanding toward the design of cutting-edge technologies. Thus, our department provides an ideal training environment for future research leaders in biological engineering at the molecular level. Researchers in our department advance treatments for various cancers, digestive diseases, developmental disorders, and aging. A number of projects develop cutting-edge materials for bio-detection and for programmed drug delivery in space and time. Studies within our department offer fundamental insight into the complex interactions that arise in microbial communities. Researchers perform single-molecule experiments to investigate the function of individual motor proteins, and theoretical modeling within our department offers fundamental physical insight into a range biological processes. These studies come together for the further understanding of biological systems and lead to novel applications to improve human health.

Biotechnology research within our department includes

  • Biosynthetic engineering of natural product polyketides (Khosla)
  • Investigation of drug therapeutic strategies for Celiac Sprue (Khosla)
  • Modeling the biophysical processes involving DNA, such as chromatin packaging and transcriptional regulation (Spakowitz)
  • Manipulating mammalian cells to understand how gene networks and expression dynamics affect genome instability, cancer, and aging (Wang)
  • Develop and use imaging and force transduction technology to investigate motor and cytoskeletal proteins at the single-molecule level (Dunn)
  • Studying the molecular interactions of microbes and microbial communities in complex environments like biofilms (Spormann)
  • Cell-free synthesis of complex proteins (Swartz)
  • Design of organic semiconductors that can sense chemical and biological species (Bao)