Stanford University's Stephen Quake has been awarded the Lemelson-MIT prize, reports Reuters. The $500,000 prize recognizes mid-career innovators. Quake has applied principles of physics to biology, and has worked on everything from chips for genetic research to sequencing his own genome to studying protein structures in Ebola and the H5N1 influenza virus. "I get interested in a scientific problem and often find a way to measure the thing I'm interested in," Quake says. "Often I find the measurement technique has different applications."
He adds that the prize money will likely go toward his children's college education.