People

Mark Bathe is a Professor in the Department of Biological Engineering at MIT, a Member of the Harvard Medical School Initiative for RNA Medicine, and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. He received his doctoral degree from MIT, working across biological, chemical, and mechanical engineering, and conducted postdoctoral research in biological physics at the University of Munich before joining the MIT faculty in 2009.

At MIT, he leads an interdisciplinary research group that engineers DNA and RNA as programmable materials for applications spanning medicine, energy, computation, and information storage. His laboratory develops DNA-based virus-like particles for vaccines and active immunotherapies, as well as structured nucleic acid nanoparticles for the targeted delivery of genetic medicines. Beyond medicine, his group uses DNA to organize quantum dots, molecular chromophores, and other functional materials with nanometer-scale precision for quantum photonics, sensing, and information processing. His research also advances molecular computing and data storage, ambient-temperature genomic biobanking, multiplexed neuronal profiling, and the engineering of functional RNA assemblies.

Across these areas, his work seeks to harness the programmability of nucleic acids to build new technologies with broad societal impact. He is academic co-founder of Cache DNA and Kano Therapeutics.

Link to a recent talk from Prof. Bathe.