| Polly Fordyce | |
| Birth Place: | Washington, DC, USA |
| Fields: | Bioengineering |
| Workplaces: | Stanford University |
| Alma Mater: | University of Colorado Boulder, BS Stanford University, PhD |
| Doctoral Advisor: | Steven Block |
| Academic Advisors: | Joseph DeRisi |
| Known For: | High-throughput enzymology, biophysics, microfludiics |
| Awards: | Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry National Science Foundation CAREER Award |
Polly Fordyce is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Bioengineering and fellow of the ChEM-H Institute at Stanford University.[1] Her laboratory's research focuses on developing and applying new microfluidic platforms for quantitative, high-throughput biophysics and biochemistry and single-cell genomics.
Fordyce was born and raised in Washington, DC.[2]
Fordyce double-majored in physics and biology at the University of Colorado Boulder, graduating in 2000. She then began a PhD in the lab of Steven Block at Stanford University, where she worked as part of a team that developed new microscopes for applying force to molecules and understanding how it affected their movements.[3] After receiving her PhD in 2007, she moved to UCSF to pursue postdoctoral research in Joseph DeRisi's laboratory developing high-throughput methods for the analysis of transcription factor interactions.[4] She has been a professor at Stanford since 2014.[2]
Fordyce's lab develops approaches for high throughput quantitative biochemistry, biophysics, and single cell assays, using a variety of approaches including microfluidics.[5] One of her lab's accomplishments is the development of the method HT-MEK (High-Throughput Microfluidic Enzyme Kinetics),[6] which enables researchers to analyze the effects of thousands of mutations on an enzyme's activity in a single experiment.[7]