Faculty

Georg Seelig is a professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and the UW Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering. He is also an adjunct professor in the UW Department of Bioengineering. Seelig holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and did postdoctoral work in synthetic biology and DNA nanotechnology at Caltech.

In 2023, Seelig received the Rozenberg Tulip Award recognizing him as “DNA Scientist of the Year” from the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering (ISNSCE). He previously received a Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award at the Scientific Interface in 2008, an NSF Career Award in 2010, a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2011, a DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2012 and an ONR Young Investigator Award in 2014.

The Seelig Lab is interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. The focus of their research is the identification of systematic design rules for the de novo construction of biological control circuits with DNA and RNA components. Their approach integrates the design of molecular circuitry in the test tube and in the cell with the investigation of existing biological pathways. Engineered circuits are being applied to problems in disease diagnostics and therapy.