Professor Amy Herr

As a Member of the Schmidt Science Fellows Academic Council, Dr. Amy Herr delivers expert scientific mentoring and support to current and Senior Fellows on career and personal development matters.

Amy is the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Professor at the department of Bioengineering at Berkeley and a Chan Zuckerburg Biohub Investigator. Her research aims to advance single-cell biology by applying knowledge of transport and reaction to design precision microanalytical tools. This entails an interdisciplinary approach that draws on a breadth of engineering disciplines, combined with principles of biology, materials science, and chemistry.

Amy completed her first degree at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) before pursuing her PhD at Stanford University. From Stanford, she was a research scientist at Sandia National Laboratories and then joined the Berkeley faculty in 2007. Among other recognition, she was a Sloan Research Fellow, NIH New Innovator, and NSF CAREER awardee. She is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and serves on the NIH National Advisory Council of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering and the DARPA Biological Technology Office’s inaugural Biological Insights Advisory Board.

Amy has been recognized for her commitment to supporting early-career scientists, receiving the Faculty Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring from the UC Berkeley Visiting Scholar and Postdoctoral Association and the Ellen Weaver Award from the Association for Women in Science. She has previously worked with the Fellowship, having led Global Meeting sessions for Fellows over several years during our Northern California meeting.