Profiles

  • 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.

  • Mary Tomagan

    Mary Tomagan is currently the Senior Administrator at EBRC, providing operation support and event planning. Prior to her position at EBRC, Mary was the Business Office and Operations Coordinator at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and a Membership Program Manager at the American Academy of Ophthalmology. She is a soccer and baseball mom of two very active boys and a foodie.

  • 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 Assistant Professor at the Department of Microbiology and Cell Science, University of Florida (UF). Before joining UF, Nils was a Research Engineer at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University and an Associate Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Space Science and Astrobiology Division. Nils holds a PhD in Metabolic Engineering from the University of Queensland, Australia and an engineer’s degree in Biochemical Engineering from the Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.

    Nils’ research comprises the rational engineering of microbial metabolism to increase the carbon efficiency of biochemical pathways for the assimilation of single-carbon compounds and the conversion thereof into advanced biomaterials. This serves the overarching goal to create a sustainable chemical industry on Earth “on the way” to new frontiers: developing circular production platforms based on microbial biotechnology could one day also support crewed long-duration space-exploration missions and -settlement.

  • Aditya Sarnaik

    Aditya Pandharinath Sarnaik is an Associate Research Professional in the School for Sustainable Engineering and Built Environment (SSEBE) at Arizona State University (Polytechnic campus). He works at Arizona Centre for Algal Technology and Innovation (AzCATI). He is a Biotechnology graduate and a trained biochemical engineer, with expertise in bacterial (photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic) metabolic and protein engineering. He has experience with upstream as well as downstream processing/ process optimization of (engineered and wild-type) cyanobacteria at pilot scale.

  • 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.

  • Anna Duraj-Thatte

    Anna Duraj-Thatte received her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology, wherein she worked on protein engineering and directed evolution. Then she pursued her postdoctoral research at Wyss Institute, Harvard University. Dr. Duraj-Thatte’s research focuses on designing and developing novel strategies to produce smart engineered living materials (ELMs) by integrating the fields of synthetic biology, materials engineering, nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence (AI). Over the last eight years, she has been developing the field of ELMs by demonstrating one of the first examples of therapeutic living materials and macroscopic transient self-regenerating
    materials for environmental applications. Her research work has also been featured in global media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian Magazine, New Scientist, CBS Boston, and Science Alert. She received the Grand Prize in the American National Science Foundation (NSF) Idea Machine competition. She was also selected as a Deep Tech Pioneer and member of Harvard Innovation Lab’s Venture Incubation Program.

  • 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.

  • Theresa Loveless

    Theresa Loveless received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from UCSF, where she studied the molecular biology of DNA replication and the DNA damage response. As a postdoctoral researcher in synthetic biology, in the laboratory of Chang Liu at UC Irvine, she made DNA recorders, synthetic biology tools that transform transient events in a cell’s life into durable changes in a small “recording” region of the cell’s genome. Theresa just started her independent laboratory in the Department of BioSciences at Rice University. The goal of the lab is to make DNA recorders that document the activation history of many signaling pathways in parallel, in physiological settings, over the whole timescale of developmental processes. These recorders will make it possible to study how transient events that are experienced heterogeneously across populations of cells affect the later behavior of each cell. Theresa is a Leading Edge Fellow and a MOSAIC K99/R00 Scholar.

  • 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.

  • Janet Standeven

    An educator with 28 years of classroom experience in Core Sciences, Social Sciences and Biotechnology. Founded the Lambert iGEM program in 2012. In 2022 Lambert’s team was named the Grand Prize Winner of the iGEM Jamboree. The iGEM competition is the leading collegiate competition in the field of synthetic biology. She is a 2022 recipient of a NIH SEPA grant with Dr. Bhamla of Georgia Institute of Technology. In collaboration with members of the Bhamla lab she leads students in research and development of synthetic biology projects that also include hardware and software components. Ongoing projects include the ElectroPen, a 23 cent electroporator and other frugal devices for extraction of DNA and quantification of data.
    Ms. Standeven received a BA in Anthropology and Social Studies Teaching Certificate from Millersville University of Pennsylvania. She earned her Master of Chemical Life Science from the University of Maryland in 2013. During her master’s studies she was a recipient of a G.I.F.T. fellowship with the Styczynski Group at Georgia Institute of Technology and subsequently received RET, support with the Styczynski group from 2014-2018. She is a recipient of numerous teaching awards and recognitions including Teacher of the Year in 2011 for Riverwatch Middle School, 2018 for Lambert High School, Forsyth County School STAR teacher in 2019 and 2023, in addition to being recognized as Biotechnology Teacher of the Year in Georgia for 2016. She was an attendee at the White House Bioeconomy Summit in 2019. She currently participates on the Human Practices committee for the iGEM foundation and serves as a Master Teacher for GABIO’s Rural Teacher Training Initiative.

  • Gozde Demirer

    Gozde was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey and received her B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Koc University in 2015. Gozde completed her Chemical Engineering Ph.D. at UC Berkeley with Prof. Markita Landry in 2020. During her Ph.D. studies, she developed nanotechnologies for plant genetic engineering. For her postdoctoral work, Gozde joined Prof. Siobhan Brady’s lab at UC Davis, where she studied nutrient use efficiency of tomato and developed high-throughput functional genomics tools to study transcriptional regulation in crops.

  • Joshua Atkinson

    Dr. Atkinson’s research aims to use approaches from synthetic biology, protein engineering, biophysics and electrochemistry to understand and control how microbes and proteins transport electrons. The Atkinson Lab seeks to elucidate the critical role electron transport plays in energy and information processing in cells and microbial communities and to use this knowledge to engineer new biotechnologies that address societal challenges in sustainability, environmental monitoring & remediation, chemical synthesis, and resource recovery & extraction. Areas of current emphasis are the development and application of design rules for (i) how microorganisms use proteins to regulate electron transfer in metabolic networks, (ii) how electron flows shape the structure of microbial communities that impact geochemical cycles, and (iii) how living electronic materials can be built that couple the information processing and catalytic capabilities of biology with electrochemical devices.

  • Ilenne Del Valle

    Ilenne Del Valle is a Research Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She earned her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Chile and her Ph.D. in Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology from Rice University, where she worked in the Silberg and Masiello lab. Following her Ph.D., she served as a postdoctoral researcher in the Eckert lab at ORNL. Currently, her research focuses on engineering new synthetic biology tools to facilitate ecosystem engineering, with a specific emphasis on environmental, energy, and sustainability applications.

  • Leili Rohani

    Dr. Leili Rohani is a Stem Cell Scientist at the School of Biomedical Engineering, University of British Columbia, and upcoming Research Scientist at MIT Synthetic Biology Center and Department of Biological Engineering. Her research has been focused on stem cells, regenerative medicine, cell therapy, and cell-fate engineering with the intent to provide a platform for future gene and precision therapies for heart diseases. She is passionate about combining tissue engineering, single-nuclei RNA sequencing and synthetic biology tools to create a human single cell atlas of heart disease as a basis for understanding, diagnosing, monitoring, and treating heart diseases. Her end goal is to look at the SynBio platform (tissue engineering, single nuclei RNAseq, synthetic biology) as a new vocabulary for disease studies to determine the ways in which cells and disease genes act, which cells are disrupted in disease, which programs change in them, what mechanisms underlie their (dis)regulation, how their cell-cell communications are affected, and what would be the impact of therapies. Beyond her research, she is passionate about science communication, networking, and collaboration.

  • Cameron Kim

    Cameron Kim is an Assistant Professor of the Practice in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University and member of the Duke Center for Advanced Genomic Technologies. He received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering at Stanford where he studied protein and RNA-based control systems within alternative splicing devices for mammalian synthetic biology applications. Since coming to Duke in 2020, Dr. Kim has been researching ethics-guided design frameworks for emergent biotechnologies, including gene and cell-based therapies, to improve the classroom experience for biomedical engineering students through team and project-based learning. He serves as the research advisor for the Duke International Genetically Engineered Machine undergraduate research group to promote authentic research experiences and mentor the next generation of bioengineers. Currently, Dr. Kim and his undergraduate team of 15 students are initiating a project on developing high-throughput screening of novel protein secretion signals to stimulate chimeric antigen receptor T cells for signal amplification. He also serves as the Associate Director for Undergraduate Studies in Biomedical Engineering. In recognition of his teaching, he received the Bass Connections Leadership Award and the Klein Family Distinguished Teaching award in 2023. Overall, his work aims to advance the field of biomedical engineering through innovative education and research, with a focus on improving society through emergent biotechnologies.

  • 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.

  • Mart Loog

    Mart Loog is a professor of molecular systems biology. Mart received Ph.D. in medicinal biochemistry from Uppsala University, Sweden in 2002, followed by postdoctoral training at the University of California, San Francisco. In 2006 Mart established his laboratory at the newly established Institute of Technology. He has received several international fellowships and awards including The Wellcome Trust Senior International Fellowship and a startup research grant from European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In 2012 he received Estonian National Science Prize in chemistry and molecular biology. In 2015 he was awarded the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant and became a principal coordinator of H2020 an Horizon Europe projects SynBioTEC (2016), GasFermTEC (2018), and DigiBio (2023) to establish the multidisciplinary Estonian Centre for Bioengineering. Mart’s research directions include regulation of the eukaryotic cell cycle, enzymology of cyclin-dependent kinases, multisite phosphorylation processing, and synthetic biology of signaling circuit design. He is leading a laboratory of 20 people and undergraduate and master’s programs in bioengineering.

    • Back to top ⇑