Sam Rodriques is an entrepreneur, technologist, and inventor. He has invented a new nanofabrication method, a new approach to sensing neural activity with probes in the bloodstream, and new ways to extract spatial and temporal information from RNA sequencing. He founded the Applied Biotechnology Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in January 2021 with the goal of combining bioengineering and entrepreneurship to develop and deploy new biotechnologies that address major unmet needs for biology and medicine. His lab is developing a broad range of technologies, including new AAV viral vectors, new diagnostic technologies for cancer and Alzheimer’s disease, and new ways to map connections between neurons in the brain. He also invents new mechanisms for funding research, such as focused research organizations. 

Prior to starting his lab, he was an entrepreneur in residence at Petri, a biotech accelerator in Boston, Massachusetts, and a total of four companies have been spun out based on technologies he has invented. In the spring of 2019, he graduated with a PhD in Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, having worked between the MIT Media Lab, the MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. He has received numerous national awards and fellowships to support his studies and recognize his research, including the 2022 Allen Distinguished Investigator Award, 2019 Stat Wunderkind award, the Hertz Foundation Thesis Prize, the Myhrvold and Havranek Family Charitable Fund Hertz Graduate Fellowship, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Churchill Scholarship.