Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Emeryville, California
Company size: 20
Est. number of positions: 1
Opportunity for remote/virtual internship in 2023: No, in-person only
Dr. Gul Sadiq Afshan is a talented biochemist and molecular biologist with 30 years’ teaching, research, and program development experience. She acquired her Ph. D at the University of WI, Milwaukee (UWM) and her post-doctorate at the School of Medicine and Public Health -University of WI, Madison. She envisioned, founded (2009) and governed (2009-2017) the stand-alone, and innovative undergraduate BioMolecular Engineering degree program, as a founding director, that attracts 50% female student population sustainably at the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE). She is a passionate and effective teacher with extensive industry and community outreach experience. She is a recipient of over $6 million in grants from private and governmental bodies like NSF and NIH and is also a recipient of ASEE North Midwest Outstanding Educator Award, Outstanding Mentor Award, and Falk Excellent Engineering Educator Award. She also serves as an affiliate professor for the USA national PLTW program and has been a leader for bringing many university-level curricula, assessment, vision change, and mindset projects to fruition. She currently is a full professor at MSOE teaching BioMolecular Engineering.
Arren Liu is a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University working with Dr. Jonathan Lynch on unravelling host-microbiota interactions and engineering microbiota for health applications. Arren received his B.S. in Genetics at Purdue University, where he completed an honors research thesis under the guidance of Dr. Kevin Solomon. Arren received his Ph.D. in Biological Design at Arizona State University, where he worked with Dr. David Nielsen and Dr. Arul Varman on metabolic engineering of microbes for the biomanufacturing of petrochemical alternatives from lignocellulosic biomass. Arren is the current EBRC SPA Membership chair and is also a part of the DEI committee for SIMB.
Robert Friedman is Vice President for Policy and University Relations at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). Friedman directs JCVI’s Policy Center, which examines the societal and policy implications of genomics, synthetic biology, and other areas of modern biology and biomedicine. Friedman is also a Professor of Practice at the UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) and is a member of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Synthetic Biology of the international Convention on Biological Diversity.
Earlier, Friedman was a Senior Associate at the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S. Congress (OTA). For 16 years, he advised Congressional committees on issues involving science and technology policy. Friedman received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in Ecological Systems Analysis, concentrating in ecology, environmental engineering, and systems analysis. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Philip Romero is an Assistant Professor in Biochemistry and Chemical & Biological Engineering at UW-Madison. He received his PhD in Biochemistry from Caltech and conducted postdoctoral research at UCSF. The Romero laboratory applies tools from statistics and machine learning to design proteins for broad applications in medicine, chemical production, and bioenergy. Dr. Romero has received the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award (2016), the NIH Outstanding Investigator Award (2016), the Shaw Scientist Award (2018), and the WARF Innovation Award (2019).