Engineering Beyond Boundaries 

Drew Endy (Th’ 98) helped start the newest engineering major, bioengineering, at both MIT and Stanford.  His research teams pioneered the redesign of genomes and invented the transcriptor, a simple DNA element that allows living cells to implement Boolean logic.  In 2013 President Obama recognized Endy for his work with the BioBricks Foundation to bootstrap a free-to-use language for programming life.  He has been working with designers, social scientists, and others to transcend the industrialization of nature, recently co-authoring Synthetic Aesthetics (MIT Press, 2014).  Drew is also a co-founder and director of Gen9, Inc., a DNA construction company.