Niles A. Pierce is an American mathematician, bioengineer, and professor at the California Institute of Technology. He is a leading researcher in the fields of molecular programming and dynamic nucleic acid nanotechnology. His research is focused on kinetically controlled DNA and RNA self-assembly. Pierce is working on applications in bioimaging. Pierce graduated as the Valedictorian of the Princeton University class of 1993 with a BSE in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering. He then attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, an achievement repeated nine years later by his sister Lillian Pierce. He completed a DPhil in Applied Mathematics in 1997. He joined the faculty of the California Institute of Technology in 2000. Source: Wikipedia (en)