EMUMS Committee

  • Michaela Jones

    Michaela is a postdoctoral researcher in Otto Cordero’s Lab at MIT working to expand the metabolic function of non-model ocean microbes. Prior to starting her postdoc, she completed her graduate work with Aditya Kunjapur at University of Delaware where she developed a new pathway for biosynthesis of non-standard amino acids and engineered a bacterial strain that was dependent on a non-standard amino acid for growth that can persist in soil microenvironments to build towards safely deployable synthetic microbes. As an EBRC board member, she serves as EMUMS chair to help provide academic mentorship to undergraduate and Master’s students interested in engineering biology.

  • 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.

  • Widianti Sugianto

    My name is Widianti, an aspiring synthetic biologist and a chemical engineering graduate student at University of Washington. My research focuses on harnessing synthetic biology as a tool for biocatalysis and bioproduction application. Outside lab, I love spending time cooking and travelling for food.

  • Kok Zhi Lee

    Kok Zhi is a postdoctoral fellow in Fuzhong Zhang’s lab at Washington University in St. Louis. He repurposes/engineers proteins in nature for biotechnology applications, tackling material synthesis and sustainability challenges. He completed his Ph.D. in Bioengineering under Kevin Solomon at Purdue University, where he characterized prokaryotic argonautes for novel gene-editing tool development without sequence-motif restrictions. Outside of research, Kok Zhi serves as a Social Chair in EBRC SPA, dedicated to creating diverse and inclusive environments for networking and career developments in the synthetic biology community.

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