Education WG

Vincent Noireaux

Vincent Noireaux got his B.Sc. in applied physics at the University of Tours (France) in 1994. In 1995 he moved to Paris for physics graduate school at the University Paris 11 (Orsay). He did his PhD at the Curie Institute (Paris, 1996-2000) in biological physics in the laboratory of Jacques Prost on the motion of the bacterium Listeria. He studied the actin cytoskeleton mechanisms involved in cell motility and learned the biology related to this project in the laboratory of Daniel Louvard. In 2000 he joined the laboratory of Albert Libchaber at the Rockefeller University in New York City where he spent five years as a postdoc. He used cell-free expression systems to construct elementary gene networks and synthetic cell systems. In 2005, he moved to the University of Minnesota where he is pursuing his work in synthetic biology using cell-free expression. His research consists of constructing and characterizing biochemical systems by executing synthetic DNA programs in vitro, from simple regulatory elements to synthetic cells.

Julius Lucks

Julius B. Lucks is Associate Chair and Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University. Research in the Lucks Lab asks fundamental questions about the molecules of life. They are particularly fascinated by how RNA, DNA’s close chemical cousin, acts as a mini molecular computer inside cells, allowing it to continuously monitor the status of itself and its environment. They then translate newly discovered fundamental knowledge into new ways to engineer biological systems for the health of ourselves and the planet, with recent applications to sustainable biomanufacturing and low cost water quality diagnostics.

For his research, Professor Lucks has been recognized with a number of awards including a DARPA Young Faculty Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, an ONR Young Investigator Award, an NIH New Innovator Award, an NSF CAREER award, the ACS Synthetic Biology Young Investigator Award, and most recently a Camille-Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award. Professor Lucks is also heavily invested in helping to train the next generation of scientists and engineers through his co-founding of the Cold Spring Harbor Synthetic Biology Summer Course and his roles as a founding board member of the Engineering Biology Research Consortium. Please visit http://luckslab.org or on twitter @luckslab for more information.

Natalie Kuldell

Dr. Natalie Kuldell leads BioBuilder, a nonprofit organization that inspires the next generation of innovators with authentic science and engineering. BioBuilder’s synthetic biology curriculum breeds excitement by helping students and teachers design and then build
biotechnologies that solve real problems throughout the US and around the world. A BioBuilder textbook was published by O’Reilly Media. In 2017, BioBuilder opened a community lab in Kendall Square’s LabCentral.

Dr. Kuldell studied Chemistry as an undergraduate at Cornell, completed her doctoral and post-doctoral work at Harvard Medical School, and taught at Wellesley College before joining the Department of Biological Engineering faculty at MIT in 2003. She is the 2020 recipient of the Margret and H.A. Rey Curiosity Award.

Education WG

Vincent Noireaux

Julius Lucks

Joshua Leonard

Natalie Kuldell