image: Harris Wang receives a 2022 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science view more
Credit: The Vilcek Foundation
NEW YORK, February 15, 2022—The Vilcek Foundation recognizes and celebrates the research contributions of synthetic biologist Harris Wang in a new article and video profile shared on the Vilcek Foundation website. The feature, Harris Wang: Using synthetic biology to understand our world, centers on Wang’s research discoveries, and on his receipt of a Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science.
The Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science are awarded to young immigrant scientists in the United States. Each $50,000 prize recognizes an individual whose early-career work exemplifies outstanding scientific accomplishment, and whose research represents a significant contribution to their field of study. Harris Wang receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for the development of tools and platforms to track, program, and engineer microbes and microbial communities and ecosystems for a range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications.
A synthetic and systems biologist at Columbia University, Wang was born in Beijing, China. His father studied biomechanics and biophysics and his mother worked in academia. When Wang was 6, his parents immigrated to the United States, seeking to establish careers and a home for their family in Salt Lake City, Utah. For three years Wang lived with his aunt and uncle in Beijing while he waited for his own immigration application to be approved. He joined his parents in the United States when he was 9 years old.
Once reunited as a family, Wang recalls spending time with his parents in the library at the University of Utah. He was fascinated by the potential knowledge that the library’s vast stacks represented, and determined to make his own discoveries and contributions to scientific literature.
The field of synthetic biology models elements and systems based on those found in nature, and applies these technologies to solve complex problems in medicine, agriculture, and systems biology. Wang draws inspiration from Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman, who stated, “What I cannot create, I do not understand.” Says Wang, “This is one of the key ethos in synthetic biology, and something I’m really passionate about. Can we build technologies that push our understanding of the basic principles of life through the act and exercise of creation?”
Most recently, Wang’s laboratory at Columbia has focused on developing genomic technologies to engineer and understand microbial communities, with an eye towards the development of therapeutics. In the development of CAMEOS, Wang used CRISPR to develop a “cellular tape recorder” to record transient cellular processes—like gene expression and metabolism—in the human gut microbiome. This work paves the way for the development of microbial signal sensors to track nutrients, toxins, and pathogens in the host gut.
Read more about Harris Wang’s work at the Vilcek Foundation: https://vilcek.co/2022vfpwangecn
The Vilcek Foundation
The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences. The foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation—to honor immigrant contributions to the United States, and more broadly to foster appreciation of the arts and sciences—was inspired by the couple’s respective careers in biomedical science and art history. Since 2000, the foundation has awarded over $6.4 million in prizes to foreign-born individuals and supported organizations with over $5.6 million in grants.
The Vilcek Foundation is a private operating foundation, a federally tax-exempt nonprofit organization under IRS Section 501(c)(3).