Pourmand research is motivated by the philosophy that the best way to accelerate discovery is to develop innovative tools that will enable sweeping advances in knowledge, and to demonstrate such advances through the application of newly developed technologies. The choice of new technologies to be developed is driven by questions that cannot be answered with existing tools; conversely, the new tools of interest to our team invariably enable additional questions to be asked. The UCSC Biotechnology group is an ideal home for developing and applying new technologies that require approaching biological problems from an engineering perspective, not common in traditional biological research. We are seizing many opportunities in Bioengineering and Biology to develop and apply new technologies to broaden the field and support other biomedical research.