Few have contributed to the field of genomics and proteomics as extensively as Michael Snyder, Ph.D., who joins us at DOC this Fall. A pioneer in what is now called “precision medicine,” Dr. Snyder is the Director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Genetics at the Stanford University School of Medicine, where he also leads The Snyder Lab.
Dr. Snyder was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2015, is the winner of the 2019 Genetics Society of America George W. Beadle Award for developing technology that analyzes proteins, genes, and RNA molecules, and winner of the 2025 Precision Medicine World Conference Pioneer Award for his influence in precision health. Additionally, he has published over 900 papers, is one of the most cited scientists, and is the first researcher to gather petabytes of data on individuals, which is one million to one trillion times more data than the average clinician collects.
Snyder’s groundbreaking work examines the role our genome and proteins play in the development of disease and how this may lead to personalized care. Called an “integrative Personal Omics Profile,” or iPOP, it may lead to individualized treatment designed for each person, a focus of Snyder’s 2016 book, “Genomics & Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know.”
Among the many discoveries credited to The Snyder Lab is the first proteome chip, a protein array, which allows for analyzing a broad spectrum of human proteins simultaneously. Snyder started this work as professor and chair of the Yale Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, directing a study that led to the first microchip able to analyze all yeast proteins.
Snyder and his team have also been credited with co-inventing RNA-Seq technology, a way to map all RNA transcripts inside a cell, and contributing more datasets than any other lab to the ENCODE project, tasked with “defining all functional elements in the human genome.” His contributions also include ChIP-Chip, replaced by ChIP-Seq, techniques for mapping transcription factor binding sites and NextGen Paired end sequencing used in mapping genomes. More recently, he and his team developed an at-home test for thousands of molecules — protein to cytokines — from just a finger-prick of blood, a finding published in a 2023 paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Snyder has co-founded 17 companies, including January AI and Iollo, with a combined enterprise value of $6 billion. Some of these include wearable device startup SensOmics, Mirvie, which analyzes RNA during pregnancy to uncover potential complications, and Personalis, designed to interpret someone’s genome to help guide their care.
We could not be more delighted to include Dr. Michael Snyder in our growing DOC 2025 Faculty and hope you will share our excitement that he is joining our DOC community.