Niles Pierce

Niles A. Pierce is an American mathematician, bioengineer, and professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is a leading researcher in the fields of DNA computing and DNA nanotechnology. His research is focused on kinetically controlled DNA and RNA self-assembly. Pierce is working on applications in bioimaging.
Pierce graduated from Princeton University in 1993 with a BSE in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, completing a DPhil in Applied Mathematics in 1997. He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 2000.

• Next-generation in situ hybridization chain reaction: higher gain, lower cost, greater durability H.M.T. Choi, V.A. Beck, and N.A. Pierce ACS Nano 8(5):4284-4294, 2014.
• Conditional Dicer substrate formation via shape and sequence transduction with small conditional RNAs L.M. Hochrein, M. Schwarzkopf, M. Shahgholi, P. Yin, and N.A. Pierce J Am Chem Soc 135(46):17322-17330, 2013.
• Nucleic acid sequence design via efficient ensemble defect optimization J.N. Zadeh, B.R. Wolfe, and N.A. Pierce J Comput Chem 32:439-452, 2011.
• NUPACK: Analysis and design of nucleic acid systems J.N. Zadeh, C.D. Steenberg, J.S. Bois, B.R. Wolfe, M.B. Pierce, A.R. Khan, R.M. Dirks, and N.A. Pierce J Comput Chem 32:170-173, 2011.
• Programmable in situ amplification for multiplexed imaging of mRNA expression H.M.T. Choi, J.Y. Chang, L.A. Trinh, J.E. Padilla, S.E. Fraser, and N.A. Pierce Nature Biotechnol 28:1208-1212, 2010.
• Programming biomolecular self-assembly pathways P. Yin, H.M.T. Choi, C.R. Calvert, and N.A. Pierce Nature 451:318-322, 2008.
• Thermodynamic analysis of interacting nucleic acid strands R.M. Dirks, J.S. Bois, J.M. Schaeffer, E. Winfree, and N.A. Pierce SIAM Rev 49(1):65-88, 2007.
• Triggered amplification by hybridization chain reaction R.M. Dirks and N.A. Pierce Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101(43):15275-15278, 2004.
• A synthetic DNA walker for molecular transport J.-S. Shin and N.A. Pierce J Am Chem Soc 126:10834-10835, 2004.

• NUPACK is a growing software suite for the analysis and design of nucleic acid systems.
• Molecular Instruments is an academic resource dedicated to the development and support of programmable molecular technologies for reading out and regulating cell state.