Profiles

  • R. Alta Charo

    R. Alta Charo (Harvard, BA biology 1979; Columbia, JD law 1982) is a 2019-2020 Berggruen Fellow at CASBS, and the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, writing on medical ethics and biotechnology regulatory policy. In government, she served as a legal analyst for the former congressional Office of Technology Assessment, policy analyst for the US Agency for International Development and senior policy advisor in the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner. She was a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission under President Clinton, and the transition team for President Obama. Charo is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and co-chaired its committee on Guidelines for Embryonic Stem Cell Research and its 2017 committee on Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics and Governance. At present, she is a member of the World Health Organization’s committee on global governance of genome editing, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction project, and of the steering committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s effort to revise and expand its guidelines for ethical research, including research on chimeras and organoids.

  • Emiley Eloe-Fadrosh

    Dr. Eloe-Fadrosh joined the JGI in 2014 to pursue her research interests in microbial ecology and metagenomics. Her current research focuses on leveraging thousands of metagenomic datasets from host-associated and environmental samples to identify novel microbial life and viral diversity. Prior to joining the JGI, she was a Bioinformatics Program Fellow at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of the Marine Microbiology Initiative. She conducted her postdoctoral training in human microbiome research at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She stepped into the Metagenome Program lead position in 2017. She additionally leads the National Microbiome Data Collaborative, a multi-lab partnership that support microbiome data exploration through a sustainable data discovery platform that promotes open science across a broad and diverse community of researchers, funders, publishers, and scientific societies.

  • Ramon Gonzalez

    Dr. Ramon Gonzalez is a Professor and Florida World Class Scholar in the Department of Chemical & Biomedical Engineering at the University of South Florida (USF) where he leads the laboratory for Metabolic Engineering and Biomanufacturing. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology. Before joining USF, Dr. Gonzalez was a Professor in the Departments of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and Bioengineering at Rice University, the Founding Director of Rice’s Advanced Biomanufacturing Initiative, and from 2012 to 2015 served as Program Director with the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) of the U.S. Department of Energy. Dr. Gonzalez’s work has been published in prestigious scientific journals, including Nature, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Chemical Biology, PNAS, and Science. He is the lead inventor in 25 patents and patent applications, co-founded several biotechnology start-ups, and has given more than 100 invited talks. He is also a member of the editorial boards of Science, Biotechnology Journal, and Metabolic Engineering Communications. Dr. Gonzalez has received numerous recognitions, including elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, AIChE Division 15c Plenary Lecture, ASM Distinguished Lecturer, SDA/NBB Glycerine Innovation Research Award, and NSF CAREER Award. He obtained a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Chile, an M.S. in Biochemical Engineering from the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso (Chile), and a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Central University of Las Villas (Cuba).

  • Chuck Smallwood

    Chuck Smallwood has broad expertise investigating and engineering cellular biochemical mechanisms in diverse biosystems including bacteria, cyanobacteria, fungi, plants, and microalgae. Most cellular membrane transport mechanisms are multicomponent protein assemblies that are complex in their expression, signaling, and energy transduction. In these contexts, our group utilizes various biochemical and genetic techniques to investigate cellular systems for improved drug (i.e. antibiotic) discovery, production of biomaterials, and biotechnology development.

  • Alanna Schepartz

  • Lauren Junker

    Dr. Lauren Junker is an innovation scout for Industrial Biotechnology Research at BASF. She has been a leader in the Industrial Biotechnology research group at BASF for the past 7 years where her teams research focused on microbiome research for personal care, microbial control solutions for personal care and animal nutrition and fermentation process optimization.
    Interested in technologies and partners to accelerate Bioscience research at BASF in the areas of industrial biotechnology including industrial enzyme and biocatalyst engineering, strain engineering for bio-based chemical production, fermentation process optimization and microbiome research.

    Previous roles include serving as a microbiologist and clinical research scientist within Johnson & Johnson’s Consumer Products Division. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology from Cornell University and did a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Harvard Medical School where she conducted research on microbial biofilms. At BASF, Dr. Junker and her team of biotechnologists work together with BASF’s Beauty Care Solutions, Care Chemicals to provide efficacious solutions for skin health, focusing on microbiome benefits.

  • Qing Sun

    Dr. Sun joined The Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering in January 2018 as assistant professor. She obtained her Ph. D. in Dr. Wilfred Chen group at University of Delaware and did her postdoc training in Dr. Timothy Lu group at MIT Synthetic Biology Center.
    We focus on synthetic biology with advancing designs and applications. Using our expertise in molecular engineering, protein engineering, and microbial consortia engineering, we are developing new techniques to reprogram gut microbiome, protein machinery and biomaterials. Our current application areas include health, environment and energy

  • Gigi Gronvall

    Gigi Gronvall is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Gronvall is the author of the book Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security, and Promise, published in fall 2016 (Health Security Press) and Preparing for Bioterrorism: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Leadership in Biosecurity. (2013) She is a member of the Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee (NExTRAC) which provides recommendations to the NIH Director and is a public forum for the discussion of the scientific, safety, and ethical issues associated with emerging biotechnologies. Dr. Gronvall is a member of the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee (TRAC), which provides the Secretary of Defense with independent advice and recommendations on reducing the risk to the United States, its military forces, and its allies and partners posed by nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional threats. She served as the Science Advisor for the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism from April 2009 until February 2010. Dr. Gronvall is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security, and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Dr. Gronvall received a BS in biology from Indiana University, Bloomington, worked as a protein chemist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University for work on T-cell receptor/MHC I interactions.

  • Monica McNerney

    Monica is a postdoc at Harvard Medical School in Pam Silver’s lab, and she is using synthetic biology to make new types of mammalian cell devices. She completed a Bioengineering PhD at Georgia Tech in Mark Styczynksi’s lab, where she engineered biosensors that could serve as equipment-free, point-of-care diagnostic tools.

  • Andrew Hunt

    Andrew Hunt is a Postdoc in the Baker Lab at the University of Washington. Andrew works on designing new proteins and developing technologies to measure biological function. Andrew is the Chair of the EBRC In Translation Podcast.

  • Cholpisit Ice Kiattisewee

    Ice is an Engineering Excellence Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT working with Prof. James J. Collins. Before that, Ice graduated from the University of Washington with a Ph.D. in Molecular Engineering and Sciences under the supervision of Prof. James Carothers and Prof. Jesse Zalatan. He worked on various projects surrounding bacterial engineering, genetic circuits, and biocatalysis, particularly the development of CRISPR tools in non-canonical microbes for various applications, such as Metabolic Engineering and Signaling. Ice is highly engaged with the EBRC and SPA community since 2019, serving in various roles.

    Originally from Thailand, Ice graduated with B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Organic Chemistry from Mahidol University before shifting to the world of Engineering Biology, starting as a Research Assistant at the School of Biomolecular Sciences and Engineering, VISTEC, Thailand. Whenever the weather permits, Ice enjoys outdoor activities including hiking, surfing, and climbing. If forced to stay indoors, he will sneak into Thai boxing practice or enjoy cooking Thai cuisine with friends.

    See further info about Ice at his personal website: https://theicechol.github.io/

  • Michael Sheets

    As a graduate student in the Dunlop Lab at Boston University, Michael uses optogenetic tools to study the development of antibiotic resistance. His current work focuses on the design & characterization of light-inducible recombinases in bacteria. He is broadly interested in using synthetic biology to combat antibiotic resistance, and incorporating the DBTL cycle into K-12 and undergraduate education.

  • Deepti Tanjore

    At ABPDU, our passion for bio-innovation drives us. Every day. Whether we’re evaluating biomass, experimenting with microorganisms, optimizing new processes, or performing assays and analyses, our end goal never changes. Simply put, we want to enable you to successfully take your bio-innovation to market.

    We’ve been operational since 2012, collaborating with researchers in the bio-products industry, the National Labs, and academia to optimize and scale technologies to enable the commercialization of bio-based chemicals, materials, and fuels.

  • Patrick Cirino

    Patrick Cirino is Associate Professor in the Departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Biology and Biochemistry, at the University of Houston (Houston, TX). He received his PhD degree in chemical engineering from The California Institute of Technology, working with advisor Frances Arnold in the area of cytochrome P450 directed evolution. He then worked as a postdoctoral research associate in microbiology at the University of Florida, under Lonnie Ingram. Current research at the University of Houston incorporates directed evolution and synthetic biology to study and engineer protein-based sensors, biosynthesis pathways, and biocatalysts for production of natural products and functionalization of hydrocarbons.

  • Nima Hajinajaf

    Nima Hajinajaf is currently a Ph.D. student of Chemical Engineering at Arizona State University in Prof. Varman’s Lab. He received his master’s in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tehran. His previous work was on “Photobioreactor optimization for CO2 removal and wastewater treatment by microalgae”. Currently, his work is on the Metabolic Engineering of Cyanobacteria and Bacteria to produce chemicals

  • Eric Lee

    Eric recently received his PhD in Infectious Diseases and Immunity at the University of California, Berkeley. In graduate school, he studied isoprenoid metabolism in the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. Outside of the lab, he was an active member of the Science Policy Group at Berkeley and was involved with science advocacy at the local, state, and federal levels, most notably by working with Assemblymember Bill Quirk to propose California Assembly Bill 1178, which aimed to increase labeling standards for over-the-counter probiotic supplements. In his spare time, he enjoys windsurfing at the Berkeley marina. He will primarily be working with the EBRC Roadmapping Working Group.

  • Becky Mackelprang

    Becky Mackelprang is the Director for Security Programs at the Engineering Biology Research Consortium. She leads EBRC’s Security Focus Area, bringing stakeholders across academia, industry, and government together to integrate security awareness into the policy and practice of engineering biology. Becky leads the development of commentary and recommendations on issues such as screening by synthetic DNA providers and the security implications at the intersection of artificial intelligence and engineering biology. She has implemented strategies to incorporate security into researcher education and training. Becky is committed to supporting an engineering biology research and development ecosystem that maximizes societal benefit while using a multi-faceted approach to support safe, secure, and productive innovation. Previously, Becky was an EBRC Science Policy Postdoctoral Scholar, an AAAS Mass Media Fellow, a science communication postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley, and received her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from UC Berkeley.

  • Gene Olinger

    Dr. Gene Olinger is the Director of the Galveston National Laboratory and a Professor in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). He also serves as the Sealy Distinguished University Chair in Tropical & Emerging Virology and Co-Director of the Scholarly Concentration in Translational Research (SciTR). For over 20 years, Dr. Olinger has conducted and supervised in vitro and in vivo research in maximum biocontainment laboratories (BSL-2 to BSL-4) across government, industry, and academic institutions. His work has focused on high-consequence pathogens, global health security, and biodefense. Internationally recognized as a subject matter expert in virology, immunology, biorisk, biosecurity, and biosafety, he has played a critical role in outbreak response efforts, coordinating diagnostic, serological, and clinical assays to monitor patients during and after epidemics. Dr. Olinger has extensive experience in the development of medical countermeasures, including prophylactic treatments, vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. In recent years, he has expanded his expertise to synthetic biology, AI/ML as well as innovative workforce development through mixed-reality and blended learning, science policy, and bioeconomy team-building.

  • Matthew Owens

    Matt was an early team member of the NYC-based global education start-up, General Assembly, and helped spearhead GA’s first programs in NYC and Los Angeles. Before this, he worked as a strategy consultant with Stax, Inc. in Boston and as an analyst for a SF-based start-up, Gratio Capital. Matt has also worked with the founding teams of several science based ventures, including Agile Sciences and Innova Dynamics. He is a graduate of the Management and Technology and Integrated Product Design (MSE) programs at the University of Pennsylvania. In Philadelphia, Matt served on the board of Philly Startup Leaders and as an Engagement Manager for the cleantech practice of Wharton’s Small Business Development Center. He is an avid runner and when not at Harlem Biospace he can likely be found running through the city.

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