Daniel A. Fletcher

Daniel A. Fletcher holds the Purnendu Chatterjee Chair in Engineering Biological Systems within the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and serves as a Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. His office is located in 708A Stanley Hall, with office hours held Mondays from 9:00 to 10:00 am.

His research centers on mechanical regulation of membrane and cytoskeleton organization in cell motility, signaling, and host-pathogen interactions. The Fletcher Lab pioneers optical microscopy, force microscopy, and microfluidic technologies to investigate fundamental cellular organizational principles through in vitro reconstitution and live cell experiments. Key projects include branched actin network assembly mechano-biochemistry, membrane deformation via protein crowding/oligomerization, and spindle scaling reconstitution in cytoplasmic extracts, with therapeutic applications targeting cancer and infectious diseases.

Dr. Fletcher advises graduate students in Bioengineering and leads the Fletcher Lab (https://fletchlab.berkeley.edu/), which develops diagnostic technologies for biomedical applications. The lab's research is supported by federal and private grants focused on instrumentation development and cellular mechanics.

The lab team integrates engineering and biological approaches to create novel tools for probing spatial organization in cellular systems, emphasizing translational applications in disease diagnostics and treatment.