Principal Investigator

Amy E. Herr holds the Chancellor’s Professorship in Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley and is a Chan Zuckerberg (CZ) Biohub Investigator. Through early 2026, Prof. Herr is on temporary leave from UC Berkeley as Vice President of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network. Her UC Berkeley research group remains active.

Prior to joining UC Berkeley, she was a staff member in the Biosystems Research Group at Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA; 2002-2007). She earned her PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford with Profs. Tom Kenny & Juan Santiago as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, an MS in Mechanical Engineering also from Stanford, and a BS in Engineering & Applied Science from Caltech. She is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), and successful entrepreneur.

Professor Herr’s research has been recognized prominent international and national organizations, including: 2023 Test of Time Award from the Nature Publishing Group, 2018 Sciex Microscale Separations Innovation Medal, 2017 Georgina Sweet Lectureship from the Australian Research Council, 2016 Mid-career Achievement Award from the American Electrophoresis Society, 2015 Georges Guiochon Faculty Fellow from HPLC, 2012 Young Innovator Award from Analytical Chemistry/CBMS, 2011 NSF CAREER award, 2010 NIH New Innovator Award, 2010 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in chemistry, 2010 New Investigator Award in Analytical Chemistry from Eli Lilly & Co., and a 2009 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award. In 2017, she was recognized with the Berkeley Visionary Award from the City of Berkeley’s Chamber of Commerce

From 2022-2026 as Vice President of the CZ Biohub Network, Prof. Herr is building a network of focused, nonprofit research organizations — partnered with top universities — through a US$1.7B gift from CZI. From 2016-2022, Prof. Herr served the UC Berkeley community by building programs and an academic spin-out incubator, as the Director of the Bakar Fellows Program (2016-2022) and the Founding Faculty Director of the Bakar BioEnginuity Hub. She is a co-inventor on >60 unique patent applications with 36 issued patents.

In her field, Professor Herr is an Associate Editor at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Lab on a Chip and serves on Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Engineering Review Committee, the Scientific Advisory Board of the US Air Force, and the Academic Council of the Schmidt Science Fellows program. From 2020-23, she served on the National Advisory Council of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NACBIB) which advises the Director of the US NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). From 2013-2023, she was a Board Member of the Chemical & Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS) which oversees the MicroTAS conferences, and was CBMS President (2021-23), Vice President (2019-21), MicroTAS co-chair (2021), and Awards Chair (2014-2019). She served as a standing member of the NIH Nanotechnology Study Section (2013-19), was a member of the 2018-2019 class of the Defense Science Study Group (DSSG) from IDA/DARPA, and served on the DARPA Biological Technology Office’s (BTO) inaugural Biological Insights advisory board. She co-directed the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s Single Cell Analysis summer course (2015 & 2016), was both Chair (2009) and Vice-chair (2007) of the Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on the Physics & Chemistry of Microfluidics and co-chair of the EMBL Microfluidics Conference.

She is faculty advisor to the UC Berkeley chapter of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE) and the Graduate Women in Engineering (GWE). Her commitment to creating a strong professional community is reflected in recognition as: 2019 Award for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring, Visiting Scientist & Postdoctoral Association at UC Berkeley and a 2007 Outstanding Mentor Award from Sandia National Labs.