Leroy Hood, a UW affiliate professor of genome sciences, immunology and bioengineering, was inducted to the National Academy of Engineering last month.

Hood is one of only seven people nationwide elected to all three of the National Academies, societies that recognize the nation’s top scientists, physicians, researchers and engineers. The academies advise and counsel the federal government on science, medicine and technology matters.

Hood grew up in several small towns in Montana. His father was an electrical engineer with the Mountain States Telephone Company and taught courses in electrical circuitry.

“I first began appreciating the beauty of chemistry in high school as a senior … when I helped teach a sophomore biology class. It was while teaching from a 1956 Scientific American article on the structure of DNA … that I realized the beauty of DNA,” Hood said.

From this point, he began working on biology, but always within the context of chemistry.

“I see myself moving throughout much of my career toward a systems approach. … One major aspect of my career has been to participate in the creation of new visions for how biology should be carried out,” Hood said.

Throughout his own education, he got a feel for teaching.

“At Caltech … I first began to appreciate the power of conceptually oriented teaching from my professors,” Hood said.

After studying human biology, he enrolled in an accelerated program at John Hopkins School of Medicine and worked at the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“There I was given an independent position, established a first-rate protein chemistry lab and worked for three years. This gave me time to think about the future, … [and I] realized I would like to [someday create] a laboratory and spend time researching molecular immunology … and developing new technologies,” Hood said.

After the NIH, he went to teach at the division of biology at Caltech. There he developed an improved version of the protein sequencer, which allowed scientists to open up a series of new fields in biology and led to the beginning of bioinformatics. He and his colleagues also developed the DNA synthesizer, which transformed the DNA synthesis process from a manual one to an automatic one.

The instrument he is best known for developing is the automated DNA sequencer, which made the Human Genome Project possible.

“The genome project, through its genetic parts list, eventually paved the way for systems biology,” Hood said.

According to the Institute for Systems Biology, systems biology is “a powerful approach to studying complex biological systems made possible through technological breakthroughs such as the human genome project. Unlike traditional biology that examines single genes or proteins in isolation, systems biology simultaneously studies the complex interaction of many levels of biological information to understand how they work together.”

Hood left Caltech in 1992 and later went on to teach biology at the UW, serving for a time as the professor and chair of molecular biotechnology. He was also the director of the National Science Foundation Science and Technology Center. Hood now serves as the president of the Institute for Systems Biology, a nonprofit research institute dedicated to the study and application of systems biology, which he co-founded in 2000.

“What a fascinating time to be in science and technology,” Hood said, considering the next 10 years.

[Reach reporter Chris Paredes at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]