Polly Fordyce

• Year

  2025

• Program

  Schmidt Science Polymaths

• Institution

  Stanford University

• Field of Study

  Bioengineering, Genetics

• Location

  USA

Polly Fordyce is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering and Genetics and Institute Scholar of ChEM-H at Stanford, where her lab develops and applies new microfluidic platforms for quantitative and high-throughput biophysics, biochemistry, and single-cell biology. Using these platforms, she and her team have investigated how enzymes achieve their incredibly catalytic efficiency and specificity and how transcription factors navigate within the genome to control gene expression. 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 an NSF CAREER Award, NIH New Innovator and Pioneer Awards, the Stanford President’s Award for Excellence in Diversity. She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator, Fellow of the AIMBE and AAAS, and co-founder of Velocity Bio.