Dr. Alex Shalek is the J. W. Kieckhefer Professor in the Institute for Medical Engineering & Science and the Department of Chemistry at MIT. He and members of his lab strive to engineer and create technologies and methods achievable by any lab, anywhere in the world through open source experimental protocols and computational packages. They employ a comprehensive, five-step approach, building innovative methodologies and leveraging them with partners around the world to facilitate deeper, more mechanistic inquiry into how cells drive tissue-level behaviors across the spectrum of human health and disease.