Moon Dance

I got an idea to search some famous people once a while (and try to remember them). I may just start with some scientists since I have more names in this field in mind. It’s a way to get to know what is going on and what is interesting. It can be anyone. Just learn something that is not all that related to my work. Maybe some athletes’ name will also show up later on. (By the way, it is VERY difficult for me to remember English names. Kind of random to me…)

Today I will talk about an American biologist, Dr. Leroy Hood. Most of the information is from wikipedia. I have listened to his talk once and that was extremely impressive. He has invented instruments that are the revolution of the biological study. Can you believe that the same person invent automated DNA sequencer, DNA synthesizer, protein sequencer and protein synthesizer? He is also a co-founder for the institute for Systems Biology (basically, this is the field I am working in).

Leroy Hood’s professional career began at Caltech and he was in my advisor’s PhD thesis committee. He was a key player in the Human Genome Project. In 1992, Dr. Hood moved to University of Washington. In 2000, Dr Hood co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington. In 2003, Dr Hood won the Lemelson-MIT Prize for Innovation and Invention for the development of the DNA sequencer

Most importantly, Dr. Hood has played a role in founding numerous biotechnology companies, including Amgen, Applied Biosystems etc. For me, these two company are Big names in the biotechnology industry!!! (kind of like Benz /BMW/Lexus in the car industry, Microsoft/Google in the computer field, ebay/Amazon in the on-line shopping etc.)