David R. Walt

David R. Walt, Ph.D., is an internationally recognized expert in nanoscience and diagnostics. He is the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, a professor of pathology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. Previously, Dr. Walt was University Professor at Tufts University, where he was a faculty member in the chemistry department. Dr. Walt is the scientific founder of Illumina Inc., where he served on the board for 18 years, and Quanterix Corporation. He co-founded several other life sciences startups, including Ultivue, Inc., and Arbor Biotechnologies. His laboratory was the first to introduce the idea of digital protein detection by developing a high throughput technology for performing single molecule analysis.

Dr. Walt has published more than 350 peer-reviewed papers and has over 100 U.S. patents. He has received numerous national and international awards and honors for his fundamental and applied work in the field of optical microwell arrays and single molecules. In addition to fundamental work on single molecules, Dr. Walt’s lab focuses on solving important clinical problems in areas that lack available biomarkers due to the inadequate sensitivity of existing assay technologies.

Dr. Walt is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the National Academy of Inventors. He received a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in chemical biology from SUNY at Stony Brook. Dr. Walt completed his postdoctoral studies at MIT.