Stephen Quake’s laboratory at Stanford University looks like biology’s version of Thomas Edison’s famous New Jersey workshop. Roll-down curtains cast shadows across odd devices buzzing and clicking in the aisles. You half expect to find Quake, author of 135 patents and rarely seen wearing anything other than a faded polo shirt, sleeping on one of the benches, just as the Wizard of Menlo Park was known to.
In September, Quake was named co-president of the BioHub, a new $600 million center funded by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg. BioHub has as its premier project helping to create a vast directory of human cells, which it calls a “cell atlas.” Quake and BioHub are also part a consortium of researchers around the globe who say mapping the millions of cells in the human body is a feat that could help drugmakers and scientists find new ways to treat disease…
Source: MIT Tech Review