Ross is a postdoctoral fellow in Peter Zandstra’s Lab at the University of British Columbia, where he works on manufacturing CAR-T cell production from pluripotent stem cells. He earned his PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT, where he worked under Ron Weiss and Domitilla Del Vecchio to study and mitigate context dependence in mammalian synthetic gene networks. Ross earned his BS in Bioengineering at the University of Washington, where he worked with Hannele Ruohola-Baker and Narendra Singh. As a SPA board member for the last few years, Ross has been leading many outreach efforts targeting undergraduate students and has developed workshops and panels to support the professional development of current and future SPA members.

Anna M. Crumbley is an NRC Postdoctoral Research Associate in the BioTechnology Division of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Chemical Biological Center (CCDC CBC). She is working to develop efficient scale up processes for synthetically modified microbes generating bio-based materials. Annie received her doctorate from Rice University, in Houston, TX, and her bachelor’s from The University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, AL, both in Chemical and Biological/Biomolecular Engineering.