Marc Salit has been tapped to spearhead the development and expansion of MITRE’s synthetic biology work as a MITRE Fellow.
As part of his appointment, Salit will lead MITRE’s new Open BioFoundry which will leverage synthetic biology to develop tools and applied capabilities in engineering biological systems, MITRE said Monday.
Charles Clancy, senior vice president and general manager of MITRE Labs and chief futurist, said, “Marc brings significant experience and leadership overseeing important synthetic biology work, and we are thrilled to have him on board to help develop one of the most impactful technologies for the future.”
Salit currently serves as an adjunct professor at Stanford University, where he directs the Joint Initiative for Metrology in Biology, which is a collaboration Salit established between Stanford, industry partners and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop standards and tools for cultivating bioeconomy products.
The new MITRE Fellow also previously served as senior staff scientist at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Prior to his time at Stanford, Salit spent nearly three decades at NIST, where he led the institute’s genome scale measurements and multiplexed biomolecular science groups.
As a MITRE Fellow, Salit’s work will focus on leveraging synthetic biology to improve remote sensing and detection, among other critical sponsor problems.
Additionally, MITRE has named synthetic biology expert Pam Silver, Ph.D. as a member of its Labs Advisory Committee.
