Christopher Voigt is an American synthetic biologist, molecular biophysicist, and engineer. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Pharmaceutical Chemistry department of the University of California - San Francisco with appointments in the Biophysics and the Chemistry and Chemical Biology graduate student programs. His research interests focus on the reprogramming of bacterial organisms to perform coordinated, complex tasks for pharmaceutical and industrial applications. He is a member of the National Science Foundation-funded Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center, called SynBERC, and works in the developing field of synthetic biology

Synthetic biology

Synthetic biology is a new area of biological research that combines science and engineering. It encompasses a variety of different approaches, methodologies, and disciplines with a variety of definitions...

. His recent works include:

• Engineering a bacterial two-component system to regulate gene expression in response to red light.

• Engineering bacteria to sense its environment and conditionally invade cancer cells either when the concentration of bacteria is large enough, when the environment has little oxygen (e.g. inside a tumor), or when a specific chemical is present.

• Constructing a logical AND gate
  AND gate
  The AND gate is a basic digital logic gate that implements logical conjunction - it behaves according to the truth table to the right. A HIGH output results only if both the inputs to the AND gate are HIGH . If neither or only one input to the AND gate is HIGH, a LOW output results...
  
   inside bacteria.

Current research projects use these new environmental sensors and logical switches to control the assembly and function of newly redesigned systems, such as a secretion needle that exports spider silk proteins or a photosynthetic apparatus responsible for converting light into chemical energy.

In 2006, he was named to the MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 Technology Review

Technology Review

Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...

 TR35

TR35

The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...

as one of the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35.