Individual Members

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.

Paul Freemont

Professor Paul Freemont is the co-founder of the Imperial College Centre for Synthetic Biology and Innovation (2009) and co-founder and co-director of the National UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology (SynbiCITE; since 2013) and Director of the London BioFoundry (since 2016) at Imperial College London. He is also currently the Head of the Section of Structural Biology in the Department of Medicine at Imperial. His research interests span from understanding the molecular mechanisms of human diseases and infection to developing synthetic biology foundational tools for specific applications. His research group has pioneered the use of cell free extract systems for synthetic biology prototyping and biosensor applications and he is the author of over 220 scientific publications (H-index 72). He is an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organisation and Fellow of the UK’s Royal Society of Biology, Royal Society of Chemistry and Royal Society of Medicine. He was a co-author of the British Government’s UK Synthetic Biology Roadmap and was a recent member of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) on synthetic biology for the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity (UN-CBD).

John Dueber

John Dueber is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering at University of California, Berkeley. He earned his Ph.D. in 2005 engineering synthetic signaling switch proteins to investigate how domain recombination events could reprogram the signaling behaviors of proteins at the University of California, San Francisco. As a QB3 Distinguished Fellow, mentored by Prof. Jay Keasling, he focused on the use of synthetic biology approaches for improved metabolic engineering performance. Modular protein-protein interaction domains were used to build synthetic scaffolds capable of co-localizing metabolic enzymes tagged with corresponding ligands for these protein-protein interaction domains. Starting his lab in 2010, his lab focuses on developing technologies for increasing engineering control over cells for a variety of engineering applications, particularly metabolic engineering. He has been awarded a NSF CAREER, DOE Early Career, and Bakar Fellow award.

Jason Delborne

Jason A. Delborne joined NC State in August 2013 as a Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program cluster hire in Genetic Engineering and Society (GES) and an associate professor of science, policy and society in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources. He also serves on the executive committee of the Genetic Engineering and Society Center. Delborne’s research focuses on highly politicized scientific controversies, drawing upon the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society (STS). He engages various qualitative research methodologies to ask questions about how policymakers and members of the public interface with controversial science.

Individual Members

Vincent Noireaux

Joshua Leonard

Julius Lucks

Natalie Kuldell

Eric Klavins

Elisa Franco

Paul Freemont

John Dueber

Jason Delborne

Chase Beisel

Christopher Anderson