Applicants

  • Alexander Refsnes Andrassy

    Research in cell culture models and synthetic biology innovations

  • Lynn Rothschild

    Lynn Rothschild is passionate astrobiologist focusing on the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere, while at the same time pioneering the use of engineering biology to enable space exploration. Her research focuses on how life, particularly microbes, has evolved in the context of the physical environment, both here and potentially elsewhere. A graduate of Yale, Indiana University and Brown, she has brought her imagination and creativity to the burgeoning field of synthetic biology, articulating a vision for the future of synthetic biology as an enabling technology for NASA’s missions, including human space exploration and astrobiology. From 2011 through 2019 she served as the faculty advisor of the Stanford-Brown iGEM team. Her lab tested these plans in space on in the PowerCell secondary payload on the DLR EuCROPIS satellite. A past-president of the Society of Protozoologists, she is a fellow of the Linnean Society of London, The California Academy of Sciences and the Explorer’s Club. She was awarded the Isaac Asimov Award from the American Humanist Association, and the Horace Mann Award from Brown University. She has been a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) fellow seven times. Lynn was formerly Professor (Adjunct) at Stanford where she taught “Astrobiology and Space Exploration” for a decade.

  • 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.

  • Tiara Rahayu

    Tiara is Biotechnology enthusiast. Loving the world with collaboration in science, content creator, leadership in community, moderator event, and science communicator. My interests are about Biomedical informatics, genetic for disease, cancer genomics and precision oncology such as biomarkers. I have a sharing platform on @ngolabs for expand my network and get out more knowledge. Now, I’m being student research in National Research and Innovation Agency for handling Biomarker of HPV.

  • Elibio Rech

    Elibio Rech, a molecular engineer, geneticist, Researcher at EMBRAPA, and Director of the National Institute of Science and Technology in Synthetic Biology, developed gene transfer technologies to produce commercial genetically modified plant products. Aim to contribute to the design, construction, and engineering of synthetic genomes, cell-free protein expression, and building cell and synthetic genetic circuits, combining top-down and bottom-up approaches within the synergies and intersections of the recombinant DNA technology for synthetic domestication of specific traits from biodiversity.

  • Elizabeth Kellogg

    Elizabeth Kellogg did her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley and received a PhD from the University of Washington, working on computational biology in the group of David Baker. She then became a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Eva Nogales at UC Berkeley using cryo-electron microscopy. Her scientific background results in a scientific approach that seeks to understand biology with a quantitative perspective, relying on biological structure determination and design. Since starting her own group at Cornell University in 2019, Dr. Kellogg has sought to understand how transposons reshape genomes and how they can be repurposed as genome-editing tools. In particular, her group has investigated the behavior and molecular mechanisms of programmable, CRISPR-associated transposons (CASTs), to determine how DNA integration is regulated spatially and temporally in a genomic context, using a combination of biochemical, structural, single-molecule and genetic approaches. Among other honors, Dr. Kellogg was selected as Pew Biomedical Scholar in 2021 and received the 2023 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society. She joined St. Jude as an Associate Member in 2023.

  • Geoff Baldwin

    Geoff Baldwin is Professor of Synthetic & Molecular Biology at Imperial College London, he is Co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in BioDesign Engineering. Research work in the Baldwin lab focuses on the development of synthetic biology approaches to facilitate the engineering of new biological systems for real-world applications. To this end he has developed foundational tools that transform our ability to rapidly prototype new biological designs, like DNA-BOT, automated DNA assembly based on the BASIC method. These fundamental developments are being applied across a broad range of projects that address gene circuit design; RNA feedback control and in vivo directed evolution for the generation of new protein specificity and functionality. Recently he has been developing new AI based approaches to enhance our ability to engineer new biological systems with human interpretable outcomes and only sparse sampling of the design space.

  • Robert Ziman

    Robert is a research software engineer with a decade of experience supporting bioinformatics and computational biology projects in both academia and industry. He was a bioinformatics programmer at The Centre for Applied Genomics in Toronto, a bioinformatics associate at Genentech in South San Francisco, and a research associate in the Cohen Lab for Aging, Systems, and Statistics at the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec. He co-founded and co-hosted the Longevity Biotech Show podcast and has been observing the longevity biotech scene since the early 2000s. Robert holds a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto.

  • Dr. Muhammad Saad Ahmed

    The main research interest of Dr. Ahmed is to focus on industrially important metabolites production in microbes through the application of system metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Previously, Dr. Ahmed developed industrially competitive microbial strains that were capable of producing industrially important secondary metabolites, for instance, β-amyrin, squalene, etc., and these strains are highly efficient for commercialization. Moreover, Dr. Ahmed expanded his research interest toward other industrially important metabolites, i.e., fragrance, flavor, and drugs, that might be in the category of alkaloids, sesquiterpenoids, monoterpenoids, diterpenoids, triterpenoids, and tetraterpenoids. These metabolites are normally used in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and cosmeceuticals industries as raw materials for the production of medicines, foods, and cosmetics.

  • Bojing Jiang

  • Jason Kang

  • Ryuichi Hirota

    I am interested in the biosafety measure for the safer use of genetically modified bacteria. By controlling bacterial growth and survival using the engineered metabolic pathway for phosphorus, we developed novel biocontainment strategy which is robust, economical, and easy to apply.

  • Abhilash Patel

  • Luis Figueroa

    Degree in Biology from the Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. Master’s degree in Bioethics from the Anahuac University, Mexico. Doctorate in Sciences from the Scientific Research Center of Yucatán A.C., Mérida, Yucatán. Mexico. Postdoctoral fellow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. St.Louis Missouri, United States.
    Currently:
    -Titular Type A Researcher at the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ), Zapopan Headquarters. Department of Industrial Biotechnology, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. Distinction by the National System of Researchers (SNI I).
    -General Coordinator of the “National Network of Synthetic Biology of Mexico”.
    -Coordinator of the research sub-line “Synthetic Biology” within the Department of Industrial Biotechnology of the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ). In the working group, state-of-the-art sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) is performed in yeast and bioinformatic analysis of omics data (genome, transcriptome, metagenome). Design of transformation systems through synthesis and Gibson assembly. We use CRISPR-Cas9, dCas9 and Cas13, in order to edit or regulate genes to check functionality in cell lines of animals, bacteria, yeast, marine organisms and plants.

  • Luis Figueroa-Yáñez

    Degree in Biology from the Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. Master’s degree in Bioethics from the Anahuac University, Mexico. Doctorate in Sciences from the Scientific Research Center of Yucatán A.C., Mérida, Yucatán. Mexico. Postdoctoral fellow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. St.Louis Missouri, United States.
    Currently:
    -Titular Type A Researcher at the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ), Zapopan Headquarters. Department of Industrial Biotechnology, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. Distinction by the National System of Researchers (SNI I).
    -General Coordinator of the “National Network of Synthetic Biology of Mexico”.
    -Coordinator of the research sub-line “Synthetic Biology” within the Department of Industrial Biotechnology of the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ). In the working group, state-of-the-art sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) is performed in yeast and bioinformatic analysis of omics data (genome, transcriptome, metagenome). Design of transformation systems through synthesis and Gibson assembly. We use CRISPR-Cas9, dCas9 and Cas13, in order to edit or regulate genes to check functionality in cell lines of animals, bacteria, yeast, marine organisms and plants.

  • Dr. DEBASHIS DUTTA

    Having earned my B.Tech in Food Technology from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, I got the opportunity to join the School of Biochemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi, as M.Tech graduate and later got Ph.D under the supervision of Prof. Mira Debnath Das. I earned Ph.D (Biochemical Engineering) on an exceptionally well researched project on “Bioprocess strategy development on production and characterization of antifungal protein from Aspergillus giganteus”.

  • Tayyaba Zainab

    I have completed my PhD in Molecular Genetics from King’s College London, UK, I came back to Pakistan to join University Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, PMAS-Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi, Pakistan. I established my research group in 2016 and became the first person in our Institution to work on CRISPR based genome editing. Currently leading my team in establishing the National Center of Industrial Biotechnology at our Institution to further strengthen my work in Metabolic Engineering/Synthetic Biology.

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