Mitra receives innovation award
Computational biologist developed cost-effective sequencing technologies
Tina McGrathRobi Mitra, PhD, (left) has received the Chancellor's Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at WashU. The award recognizes the advances he developed to improve the capacity and reduce the cost of genomic screening technologies. Provost Beverly Wendland, PhD, presented the award at the eighth annual Celebration of Inventors hosted by the Office of Technology Management April 24.
Robi Mitra, PhD, the Alvin Goldfarb Distinguished Professor of Computational Biology in the Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship for developing new genomic technologies that have allowed dramatic reductions in the cost of DNA sequencing.
The award was presented at the Office of Technology Management’s annual Celebration of Inventors. In addition to the presentation of the Chancellor’s Award, the event honored the successes in innovation from WashU faculty from the previous calendar year, including all WashU U.S. patent awardees and recognition of the newest cohort of WashU faculty elected as fellows and senior members of the National Academy of Inventors.
There was a great deal to celebrate from the past year – WashU has jumped 11 places to 26th on the National Academy of Inventors‘ list of the top 100 U.S. universities granted U.S. utility patents. WashU as a whole was awarded 82 U.S. patents last year, 58 of which went to WashU Medicine.
Mitra is a prolific inventor who owns or co-owns more than 20 patents, most of which were inspired by his research on experimental and computational methods to understand the fundamental mechanisms that control gene regulation. He led the earliest experiments pioneering next-generation sequencing, work that allowed him to develop technology that has reduced the cost of DNA sequencing by several orders of magnitude. That technology has proved versatile, as Mitra has developed applications to address a variety of problems in diagnostics, genomics and gene regulation. He founded two start-up companies – Kailos, which owns a technology that can help doctors identify treatment risks by analyzing a patient’s genome, and Encodia, which seeks to expand the use of protein analysis in labs and clinics.
Mitra is a leader of genomic science at WashU Medicine, having played significant roles in the establishment and growth of the Genome Technology Access Center, the Genomics and Pathology Services Lab and the Genome Engineering and Stem Cell Center. He is a senior fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and was also named a senior fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering earlier this year.
