Lloyd M. Smith

Lloyd M. Smith grew up in Berkeley, California, one of four children. His father was a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and his mother a professor of mathematics. Lloyd attended the Berkeley public schools, which he says were excellent. He developed no overwhelming interest in any of the sciences until he was a student at University of California, Berkeley. There he liked biology, chemistry and physics and chose to major in biochemistry. He worked in Wayne Hubbell’s lab, studying membranes and synthetic chemistry. On Hubbell’s advice he enrolled in graduate school at Stanford University, entering Harden McConnell’s lab to work on diffusion in membranes, obtaining his PhD in biophysics and publishing nine papers. Now interested in instrumentation and in immunology, he accepted a postdoc with Leroy Hood at the California Institute of Technology. During months of sequencing he thought up the first fluorescence-based automated DNA sequencing instrument, thus combining his love of physics with his love of biology and chemistry.

Working with Michael Hunkapiller on commercialization of his technology, he became a consultant for Applied Biosystems (ABI), learning first-hand of the complications of relationships between academia and industry. With what became the seminal paper describing his work accepted for publication in the journal Nature, he spent several weeks in Europe. 

Smith accepted an assistant professorship at the University of Wisconsin, eventually becoming Director of the Genome Center and Chair of the Analytical Sciences Division in the Department of Chemistry. There Smith developed another laser system for sequence analysis and began the use of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) on nucleic acids. He also founded his own company, Third Wave Technologies. He discusses such new methods as array technology; gene expression chips and Affymetrix; pyrosequencing; electrospray; and proteomics. He explains how parallelism has enhanced Moore’s Law, and the roles of computers and lasers as drivers of all these innovations. He revels in the confluence of instrumentation, chemistry, and computation. Though he acknowledges that informatics is now required to make sense of the huge volumes of data enabled by technology, he emphasizes the continuing need for thinking.

Stanford University

1981

Postdoctoral Fellow, under Harden M. McConnell

Stanford University

1981 - 1982

Lecturer, Chemistry

California Institute of Technology

1982 - 1985

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

California Institute of Technology

1985 - 1987

Senior Research Fellow, Division of Biology, under Leroy Hood

University of Wisconsin, Madison

1987 - 1992

Assistant Professor, Analytical Sciences Division, Department of
Chemistry

University of Wisconsin, Madison

1992 - 1995

Associate Professor, Analytical Sciences Division, Department of
Chemistry

University of Wisconsin, Madison

1995 - present

Professor, Analytical Sciences Division, Department of Chemistry

University of Wisconsin, Madison

1999 - 2001

Chair, Analytical Sciences Division, Department of Chemistry

University of Wisconsin, Madison

2001 - present

Director Genome Center

University of Wisconsin, Madison

2003 - 2004

Chair, Analytical Sciences Division, Department of Chemistry

University of Wisconsin, Madison

2006 - 2010

Chair, Analytical Sciences Division, Department of Chemistry

David C. Brock

David C. Brock is a senior research fellow with the Center for Contemporary History and Policy at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. As a historian of science and technology, he specializes in the history of semiconductor science, technology, and industry; the history of instrumentation; and oral history. Brock has studied the philosophy, sociology, and history of science at Brown University, the University of Edinburgh, and Princeton University.

In the policy arena Brock recently published Patterning the World: The Rise of Chemically Amplified Photoresists, a white-paper case study for the Center’s Studies in Materials Innovation. With Hyungsub Choi he is preparing an analysis of semiconductor technology roadmapping, having presented preliminary results at the 2009 meeting of the Industry Studies Association.

Richard Ulrych

Richard Ulrych is the director of institutional grants and strategic projects at the Chemical Heritage Foundation.