Profiles

  • Margaret Cook

    Maggie Cook is a PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Molecular Engineering at the University of Washington. Her research focuses on developing cell free systems for metabolic engineering. She received her Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering and a minor in biochemistry from Arizona State University, where she led the university’s iGEM team.

  • Hinako Kawabe

  • Nicholas Kaplan

    I am a first-year graduate student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Jorge Marchand’s group at the University of Washington, studying the implementation of xenonucleic acids (XNAs) into synthetic biology. I also spent 5 years in J. Andrew Jones’s lab at Miami University where I received my B.S. and M.S. degrees, working on the bioproduction of psychoactive compounds.

  • Gage Owens

  • Simrita Deol

    I am an MD PhD candidate with a background in general and computational biology. I currently work on engineering immune cells to express synthetic cytokines, which enable them to kill tumor cells with enhanced efficacy. I also focus on engineering immune cells to limit production of synthetic cytokines to solid tumors, limiting cytokine mediated toxicity while maximizing immune system activation against tumors. I plan to use my dual degree to lend a clinical perspective to the study and development of immunotherapies.

  • Sheela Vemu

    Associate Professor at Biology, Waubonsee Community College, IL. I am a Bio QUEST curriculum consortium fellow, contributor to the development of the Scientific Teaching Course from the National Institute of Scientific Teaching (NIST) and Editorial Board member for CBE-Life Sciences Education (LSE) journal.My doctoral training is in Pharmacology and Molecular biology. Recently, my scholarship has shifted to science education. I enjoy working with all students, especially freshman/sophomores from diverse backgrounds in biology education research projects in the aspects of effective study strategies and metacognition. I am passionate about implementing Course -Based Undergraduate Experiences (CUREs) with the lens of a quantitative data literacy to foster inclusion in a community college classroom. I continue to use project based assignments and data interpretation modules with scientific contributions of scientists who are members of historically excluded groups. Teaching is the way I connect with people, especially young people. I learn so much from them in trying to figure out how to help them learn.I enjoyed co-leading the first ASCN Inclusive STEM Teaching Project ASCN Learning community in 2021. In my workings with various groups, I learned the skills of building learning communities to foster shared common goals and attitudes while promoting an equitable participation of all members. It gave me a platform to bring the voices of the community college landscape with STEM practitioners from other institution types. The opportunities to be informed by the lived perspectives from different stakeholders, led me to ponder about the aspects of implementing and scaling change. I see myself as a change agent at the grassroots level.

  • Kaitlin Dailey

    I am a Research Instructor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Eppley Institute for Cancer Research, hosted by the labs of Dr. Michael (Tony) Hollingsworth (cancer biology, immunology) and Dr. Ken Bayles (bacterial genetics, microbiology). During my doctoral studies, I became fascinated with the many advantages oncolytic bacteria have over traditional therapeutics. As a result, I pursued specific training in genetic engineering and anaerobic bacteria. I performed ground-breaking studies, accomplishing the first CRISPR-mediated modification of Clostridium novyi-NT and established methodologies that have added to the field of biologic therapeutics. I chose post-doctorate studies at UNMC to further my training in immunology, cancer models, bacterial genetics, and microbiology. My long-term career goal is to establish a diverse and equitable academic research lab focused on genetically engineering single celled organisms for pharmaceutical and biofuel development. Additionally, I ascribe to the teacher/scholar model and intend to use my expertise to generate graduate and undergraduate courses as well as to mentor students in a laboratory setting – while fostering inclusive environments in both circumstances.

  • Joshua Glazier

    I’m a PhD student in Mark Mimee’s Microbiome Engineering Lab at UChicago. My main research interests are in synthetic biology, and more specifically applying synbio techniques to bacteria and harnessing their immense potential as sensors, tiny live cell factories, and potential biotherapeutics. Previously I worked at Gladstone Institutes at UCSF on novel antiviral strategies that involved engineering therapeutic interfering particles to outcompete harmful pathogenic strains.

  • Peren Coskun

  • Davy Deng

  • Devin Camenares

    I have been interested in synthetic biology for over a decade – it has motivated much of my academic career and is highlighted by involvement in iGEM. Attending the Jamboree in 2006, I returned as a volunteer in 2013 and 2014, after completing a PhD in Molecular Biology (Studying trans-translation in E. coli under Dr. Wali Karzai at Stony Brook University). I have been the primary mentor for teams at the two institutions where I taught; Kingsborough Community College (2016, 2017) and Alma College (2019 to present). I have also participated in the iGEM community in other ways, acting as a judge in 2017 and 2018, and an After iGEM committee member working on the EduHall project and, most recently, the SynBio-101 project. In addition to iGEM and other synthetic biology research, I have active research in bioinformatics, self-taught in Java and other languages.
    When I am not in the lab, meetings, or teaching, I am either spending time with my wife or daughter, or I am on the tennis courts or at the chess board (I used to be a USCF rated expert and still an avid player).

  • Jacob Martin

    I develop computational models of metabolism to aid and accelerate metabolic engineering. I use large-scale ODE models, along with machine learning and bioinformatics tools, to capture data in dynamic cell-free systems and use this understanding to guide experimental design and understanding.

  • Alexandria Palaferri Schieber

    I performed my undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley, majoring in Cognitive Science with a minor in Education. During this time, I became fascinated with infectious disease by work I did in the Vance lab. For my thesis work, I am studying the effect of social interaction during infection. I am inspired by the findings of Dr. Ayres’ of the cooperative defenses and host- environment interactions during infection, including diet, temperature and social interaction.

  • Jorge Marchand

    Dr. Jorge Marchand is an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He did his PhD work at the University of California, Berkeley in the research group of Michelle Chang, where he worked on the discovery of biosynthetic pathways for making terminal alkyne amino acids. His postdoctoral work was done at Harvard Medical School with the George Church group. Here, he focused on engineering translation and developing new sequencing technologies to study tRNA. He now runs an independent research group that aims to utilize fundamental approaches in synthetic biology, chemical biology, biosynthesis, and biomolecular engineering for reprogramming life at the nucleic acid level.

  • Daniel Haller

    I graduated with a BS in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University, where I worked in yeast metabolic engineering in Dr. Nathan Crook’s lab. I am now a graduate student in Dr. Jeff Tabor’s lab as part of the Systems, Synthetic, and Physical Biology graduate program at Rice University. I am interested in integrating systems and synthetic biology approaches to understand and engineer complex multicellular behavior in bacteria.

  • Dalton George

    Dalton George is a postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University with a joint appointment in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) and the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering (SBHSE). His background is in science, technology, and society studies and he primarily utilizes sociological methods in his research work. Research topics primarily focus on governance challenges associated with emerging biotechnologies and synthetic biology.

  • Mitchell Syberg-Olsen

    I am a graduate student in the Systems, Synthetic & Physical Biology program at Rice University. My focus is on advancing foundational technologies to increase the pace and scale of synthetic biology projects. I am working towards this goal under the supervision of Dr. Jeff Tabor where we are developing a novel method for enzymatic DNA synthesis.

  • Timothy Vu

    I am currently a PhD student from Northwestern University studying Biomedical Engineering. I received my BS in Biomedical Engineering from UC Irvine and my MS in Bioengineering from Rice University. My research interest encompasses utilizing synthetic biology tools to create better therapeutic nanoparticles for immunotherapy. I’m also broadly interested in microfluidics for organ-on-chips and point-of-care diagnostics, aging, autoimmune disease, gastrointestinal diseases, and psychedelic medicine.

  • Ania-Ariadna Baetica

    Dr. Ania-Ariadna Baetica is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics at Drexel University. She received her BA degree from Princeton University in 2012 and her PhD from California Institute of Technology in 2018. Following her degrees, she was a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California San Francisco.

    Dr. Baetica’s group leverages control theory along with systems biology, synthetic biology, and computational science to solve biotechnological and medical challenges. Her group designs robust and modular synthetic biological circuits by incorporating layered feedback mechanisms.

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