Goncagul Cengiz Baris

Goncagul Cengiz Baris is a doctoral student in law at the T.C. Beirne Law School, University of Queensland and the ARC Centre of Excellency in Synthetic Biology. She is also a bursary and part of the Australian National Science Agency, CSIRO’s Advanced Engineering Biology Future Science Platform, supervised by Rob Speight, the director of AEB FSP and a member of EBRC. Her thesis research seeks to understand the role of law in establishing, implementing, and regulating the standards of Synthetic Biology by looking at the intersection between collective knowledge management and intellectual property regimes. Of particular interest to her research are the notions of standard biological parts, organism-level standardisation, biosecurity, biosafety and how standards mediate and operate by differing modes of circulation. Say hello at g.cengiz@uq.edu.au

David Garcia

Dr. David Garcia is a synthetic biologist and metabolic engineer currently working as a Senior Research Scientist in the BioChemistry Branch at DEVCOM CBC and a visiting scholar at Caltech. He spent the first year of an NRC postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech in the Murray lab developing cell-free biological circuitry and simplified organisms. He earned his doctorate in Mitchel J Doktycz’s laboratory at The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. During this time, he was awarded an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to develop his thesis work focused on cell-free systems optimized for metabolic engineering and protein production. His current work is centered around the use of high-throughput methodologies to scale the production of cell-free biological sensors and cell-free bioproduction.

Transforming trash: strategies to develop waste into a feedstock for a circular bioeconomy

Publication Date: February 2024 | Originally published in Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining.

A strategy to develop agriculture and food production waste into biomanufacturing feedstocks that leverages existing, local waste streams; engineering biology; broad stakeholder collaboration; and federal coordination.

Alex Hansen

Robert Barlow

I am a graduate student at the University of Delaware in Dr. Kevin Solomon’s lab. I am researching and developing new gene editing technologies to complement existing tools.

Piyush Nanda

I am a PhD candidate in Andrew Murray’s lab at Harvard University. I am fascinated by how cells orchestrate thousands of chemical reactions in a coordinated manner within them. I am also interested in developing platform synthetic biology strategies to improve bioproduction. I like reading books on mathematics, evolution and economics. I am determined to figure out ‘the theory of everything’ for biology.

XU ZHANG

I am an interdisciplinary researcher skilled in electrochemistry, synthetic biology, microbiology, and environmental engineering. I specialize in developing rapid, multiplex whole-cell biosensors by merging synthetic electron flow with advanced electrochemical techniques. These innovations convert biological signals into digital outputs, targeting diagnostic and public health challenges.
My future goal is to utilize microbial electron transfer to create conductive biomaterials for advanced bioelectronics, aiming to revolutionize personalized healthcare.

Mary Tomagan

Ian Blaby

Dr Blaby received his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, as a Medical Research Council (MRC) fellowship recipient. After post-doctoral positions at the University of Florida and UCLA (supported by an NIH fellowship), he co-led a DOE Science Focus Area centered on functional genomics of phototrophs at Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY. Since 2019 he heads the DNA synthesis platform at the Joint Genome Institute, where he leads three groups focused on HTP DNA design and assembly, strain engineering and bioinformatic tool development/data analysis.

Channabasavaiah Gurumurthy

CB Gurumurthy (Guru), BVSC, MVSC, PHD, Exec MBA is the Director of Mouse Genome Engineering Core Facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), Omaha, Nebraska and he is also a professor in the department of Genetics, Cell Biology and Anatomy. He develops and improves mouse genome editing technologies. In collaboration with Dr Masato Ohtsuka, Tokai University, Japan, he has published several landmark papers on CRISPR genome engineering technologies. Two of their breakthrough technologies, Easi-CRISPR and i-GONAD, are now widely adapted at core facilities and laboratories. Several hundreds to thousands of mouse models are generated each year using their methods. Guru has received over 100 invitations within USA and over 20 invitations from 12 countries to deliver keynote talks or presentations, to organize workshops and to chair sessions at conferences. He is one of the six researchers to receive inaugural Outstanding Genomic Innovator award from the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Nils Averesch

Nils is an academic staff scientist and group-leader at Stanford University (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering), researching the conversion of single-carbon feedstocks into advanced biomaterials using microbial biotechnology. His goal is to create a sustainable chemical industry on Earth “on the way” to new frontiers, by developing circular biological production platforms that can support crewed long-duration space-exploration missions. For that, Nils has also explored the usefulness of this approach on a space-analog mission, at the Space Exploration Analog and Simulation Habitat ‘HI-SEAS’, as a proving ground for Mars.

US-UK Engineering Biology Reception

The UK Science and Innovation Network is holding an in-person reception at 4:00pm ET on May 15 at Georgia Tech ahead of the EBRC Annual Meeting. Recognizing the critical need for international collaboration in harnessing engineering biology to address global challenges, and with clear overlapping areas of focus set out by both countries in the 2022 US Bioeconomy Executive Order and 2023 UK National Vision for Engineering Biology, this event aims to explore avenues to deepen the collaborative ties between both countries.

We invite all Annual Meeting participants to attend this event! Please register by May 6, 2024.

Register here

The reception will feature panel discussions on key challenges for engineering biology, with representation from the US and UK, and will conclude with informal networking to celebrate the power of cooperation in engineering biology. An agenda and additional programmatic information will be available soon.

Please reach out to Garrett Dunlap at garrett.dunlap@fcdo.gov.uk with any questions.

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