Jennifer Dionne
20 - 24 July 2025
Hilton Long Beach
Long Beach, California USA
Events
Jennifer Dion
Stanford University, USA
Exploring light and life: Nanophotonics and AI for scalable molecular sensing, sequencing, and synthesis
We present Si nanophotonic chips that may enable unprecedented data about biochemical systems, at rates previously unattainable. We apply these chips to analyse the tumor-immune microenvironment, achieve glyco sequencing and enable site-specific DNA synthesis.
About the Speaker
Jennifer (Jen) Dionne is a Professor of Materials Science at Stanford. She is also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and deputy director of Q-NEXT, a National Quantum Initiative. From 2020-2023, Jen served as Stanford’s Inaugural Vice Provost of Shared Facilities. Jen received her B.S. degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, her Ph. D. at Caltech and her postdoctoral training at Berkeley.
As a pioneer of nanophotonics, she is passionate about developing methods to detect and direct biochemical transformations. Her research has developed culture-free methods to detect pathogens and their antibiotic susceptibility; amplification-free methods to detect and sequence nucleic acids and peptides; and new methods to image catalytic reactions with atomic-scale resolution. She is the recipient of the NSF Waterman Award, NIH New Innovator Award and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. She was featured on Oprah’s list of “50 Things that will make you say ‘Wow’!”. Dionne's alum hold faculty positions spanning top academia, industry, startups, policy and communications, including a Pulitzer prize winner.
