David Schaffer is the Hubbard Howe Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Bioengineering, and Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, where he also serves as the Director of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). He received a B.S. from Stanford University in 1993 and a Ph.D. from MIT in 1998, both in chemical engineering. He then conducted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies before joining Berkeley in 1999. There, he applies engineering principles to optimize gene and stem cell therapies, work that includes developing the concept of applying directed evolution to engineer targeted and efficient viral gene therapy vectors as well as new technologies to investigate and control stem cell fate decisions. In addition, he has co-founded six companies, and one, 4D Molecular Therapeutics, has advanced this technology into numerous human clinical trials. He has published >220 papers, has advised >90 graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, is an inventor on >50 patents, and has received recognitions including the Andreas Acrivos Professional Progress Award, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award, the American Chemical Society Marvin Johnson Award, the ACS BIOT Division Young Investigator Award, and the Biomedical Engineering Society Rita Shaffer Young Investigator Award.