Stephen Fried PhD

Stephen Fried is a native of Kansas City. He received two S.B. degrees (2009) from MIT in chemistry and physics and completed his doctoral training at Stanford under the mentorship of Prof. S. G. Boxer in 2014. As a graduate student, Stephen's research focused on understanding the physical principles underpinning enzymes’ catalytic power. From 2014 to 2018, Stephen was a Junior Research Fellow of King’s College and conducted research at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, United Kingdom. In Cambridge, Stephen’s research focus shifted to chemical and synthetic biology.

His post-doctoral work led to the co-invention of the stapled ribosome, the discovery of many new orthogonal tRNA-synthetase pairs for genetic code expansion, and the first systematic investigation of tRNA decoding patterns in vivo. Stephen joined the Department of Chemistry in 2018 as an assistant professor. In 2019, he became a member of the Program in Molecular Biology (PMB). In 2020, he became part of the Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) program and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology, by courtesy. Stephen has been the recipient of the HFSP Young Investigator Award and the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.