SynBERCer and "alpha synthusiast" Drew Endy has accepted a faculty position at Stanford's bioengineering department, set up in 2002. Endy is the first professor hired there who focuses on synthetic biology. The Stanford job will bring Endy back to the Bay Area after five and a half years at MIT. (Bound in part by SynBERC, the Bay Area and Boston are the two largest U.S. centers of synthetic biology activity.) Before heading for Cambridge, Endy helped start the Molecular Sciences Institute, an independent nonprofit biological research lab in Berkeley. It was there that Endy began to tackle the engineering challenge of managing the complexities of living cells. At Stanford, Drew will continue to help build the collaborative social environment that is accelerating the emerging field of synthetic biology, a feat for which he is perhaps best known.
Read the full story on SFGate ->