David R. Walt is professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard Medical School, a core faculty member of the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, an associate member at the Broad Institute and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Dr. Walt is co-director of the Mass General Brigham Center for COVID Innovation. He is the scientific founder of Illumina and Quanterix, and he has co-founded multiple other life-sciences startups. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the U.S. National Academy of Medicine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Inventors and he has been inducted in the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame.