David Riglar

David has been a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow in the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London since 2019. His lab uses a combination of synthetic biology, imaging and sequencing based approaches to better understand the function of the gut and its microbiota during health and disease. Using this knowledge they are developing innovative technologies, such as living engineered probiotics, to probe and control the mammalian gut environment.

Prior to starting his lab, David undertook his postdoc in Pamela Silver’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. As a Human Frontier Science Long-term Fellow and NHMRC/ RG Menzies Fellow, David’s work focussed on using synthetic biology approaches to engineer bacteria as tools to probe the mammalian gut environment.

In 2013, David completed his PhD with Jake Baum and Alan Cowman at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (University of Melbourne) in Melbourne, Australia. His PhD research investigated how the parasites responsible for human malaria disease infect red blood cells using cutting-edge imaging platforms.

David holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.

Yue Han

Yue is a Ph.D. candidate at the Styczynski lab at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research is focused on developing computational models for metabolic pathways toward effective strain design. Yue completed her undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Chemical Engineering. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies and exploring the city.

Megan McSweeney

Megan is a postdoctoral scholar in the Jewett Lab at Stanford University. She earned her BS in chemical engineering from the University of Rhode Island—with minors in chemistry, mathematics, and music performance—and her PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Georgia Tech. Her PhD work focused on using cell-free expression systems to engineer diagnostic platforms for point-of-care biosensing applications. As an EBRC SPA member, Megan serves as a liaison to the education working group and co-chair for EMUMS.

Joshua Atkinson

Josh is a postdoctoral fellow in Moh El-Naggar’s lab at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on using synthetic biology and protein engineering to control electron transport in biological systems. Josh is a member of the EBRC Student and Postdoc Association Board and works as a liaison to the education working group.

Ying-Chiang Jeffrey Lee

Ying-Chiang is a graduate student in the Donia Lab at Princeton University. He currently works on the capture and characterization of novel bioactive microbiome-derived peptides, particularly focusing on host-microbe interactions. The long term goal is to engineer therapeutic peptides from natural templates. Before coming to Princeton, Ying-Chiang completed his undergraduate work at Washington University in St. Louis where he worked in the Moon Lab and Virgin Lab. He then completed an MPH specializing in Global Health followed by an MEng.

Leah Davis

Leah is a Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student in the Daringer Lab at Rowan University. Her research focuses on engineering mammalian cell-based biosensors for the detection of extracellular ligands. Before starting graduate school, she received her undergraduate degree in Energy Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, where she completed four internships and worked full-time for a year post graduation. If she’s not in the lab you can find her with her pug, Nugget.

Yan Zhang

Yan is a postdoctoral fellow co-advised by William (Bil) Clemons and Richard Murray at Caltech, where she applies cell-free synthetic biology to engineer bacterial viruses for therapeutic applications and precision microbial control. Yan received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University (2017) and her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology (2022). As a board member of the SPA and the co-liaison for the Policy and International Engagement (P&IE) working group, she is committed to helping to build connections between researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders to advance the application and reach of engineering biology research.

Eric J. South

As a graduate student in the Dunlop Lab at Boston University, Eric is developing optogenetic tools and feedback control strategies to improve how heterologous metabolic pathways integrate with native host cell physiologies. He is broadly interested in how synthetic biology and computer-aided techniques are being combined to accelerate the design of engineered microbes.