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Associate Professor of Bioengineering and of Genetics

Polly Fordyce

Associate Professor of Bioengineering and of Genetics
Polly Fordyce is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Bioengineering and fellow of the ChEM-H Institute at Stanford, where her laboratory focuses on developing and applying new microfluidic platforms for quantitative, high-throughput biophysics and biochemistry and single-cell genomics. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with undergraduate degrees in physics and biology before moving to Stanford University, where she earned a Ph.D. in physics for work with Professor Steve Block developing instrumentation and assays for single-molecule studies of kinesin motor proteins. For her postdoctoral research, she worked with Professor Joe DeRisi to develop a new microfluidic platform for understanding how transcription factors recognize and bind their DNA targets as well as a new technology for bead-based multiplexing. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the NIH New Innovator and Pioneer Awards, an NSF CAREER Award, the 2023 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, and is a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator.

Education

Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California San Francisco, Biophysics (2014)
Ph.D., Stanford University, Physics (2007)
B.A., University of Colorado at Boulder, Physics, Biology (2000)