2009 Knight Lecture

Daniel E. Morse is the Wilcox Professor of Biomolecular Science and Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of the UCSB-MIT-Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies. He received his B.A. in Biochemistry from Harvard, his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, conducted postdoctoral research at Stanford University and was the Silas Arnold Houghton Associate Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Medical School before joining the faculty at Santa Barbara.  Known as the developer of "silicon biotechnology," Morse's current research is focused at the interface between biotechnology and materials science, with innovations in low-temperature nanofabrication of semiconductors for improvements in solar energy, batteries, IR detectors, ferroelectrics, catalysts and bio-inspired adaptive optical materials. He was honored by Scientificas one of the top 50 technology innovators of 2006 for his development of bio-inspired, American kinetically controlled routes to semiconductor thin films and nanoparticles, was the 7th Kelly Lecturer in Materials and Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and a 3M Lecturer in Chemistry and Materials at the University of Vancouver. Elected a Fellow of the AAAS and the Smithsonian Institution, he received a Career Development Award from the NIH, a Faculty Research Award from the American Cancer Society, and recognition as Visiting Professor at the University of Paris and universities in Japan, Singapore and the UK.