Erik Winfree (born September 26, 1969^[1]) is an American applied computer scientist, bioengineer, and professor at California Institute of Technology.^[2] He is a leading researcher into DNA computing and DNA nanotechnology.^[3][4][5]

In 1998, Winfree in collaboration with Nadrian Seeman published the creation of two-dimensional lattices of DNA tiles using the "double crossover" motif. These tile-based structures provided the capability to implement DNA computing, which was demonstrated by Winfree and Paul Rothemund in 2004, and for which they shared the 2006 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.^[3][6]

In 1999, he was named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.^[7]

He graduated from the University of Chicago with a BS, and from the Computation and Neural Systems program at the California Institute of Technology with a PhD, where he studied under his advisors John Hopfield and Al Barr.^[8] He was a Lewis Thomas Postdoctoral Fellow in Molecular Biology at Princeton University.^[9] He was a 2000 MacArthur Fellow. His father Arthur Winfree, a theoretical biologist, was also a MacArthur Fellow.

Works

• DNA Based Computers V: Dimacs Workshop DNA Based Computers V June 14–15, 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Editors Erik Winfree, David K. Gifford, AMS Bookstore, 2000, ISBN 978-0-8218-2053-7
• Evolution as computation: DIMACS workshop, Princeton, January 1999, Editors Laura Faye Landweber, Erik Winfree, Springer, 2002, ISBN 978-3-540-66709-4
• "DNA Computing by Self-Assembly", Ninth Annual Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering, National Academies Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-309-09139-8
• Algorithmic Bioprocesses, Editors Anne Condon, David Harel, Joost N. Kok, Arto Salomaa, Erik Winfree, Springer, 2009, ISBN 978-3-540-88868-0