Michael Snyder
Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Genetics, Chair, Department of Genetics, Stanford University
As a pioneer of precision medicine, Michael Snyder has invented many technologies enabling 21st-century healthcare, including systems biology, RNA sequencing and protein chips. Dr Snyder has initiated the big data approach to healthcare through his work using omics to detect early-stage disease, including wearables to detect infectious diseases such as Covid-19 and at-home microsampling to measure hundreds of molecules from a single drop of blood. He is the first researcher to gather petabytes of data on individuals, which is 1 million to 1 trillion times more data than the average clinician collects. He has published more than 800 papers and is one of the most cited scientists. In terms of commercial success, Dr Snyder has co-founded 17 companies (including two unicorns) with a combined enterprise value of more than US$6 billion.