Profiles

  • Dr. Muhammad Saad Ahmed

    The main research interest of Dr. Ahmed is to focus on industrially important metabolites production in microbes through the application of system metabolic engineering and synthetic biology. Previously, Dr. Ahmed developed industrially competitive microbial strains that were capable of producing industrially important secondary metabolites, for instance, β-amyrin, squalene, etc., and these strains are highly efficient for commercialization. Moreover, Dr. Ahmed expanded his research interest toward other industrially important metabolites, i.e., fragrance, flavor, and drugs, that might be in the category of alkaloids, sesquiterpenoids, monoterpenoids, diterpenoids, triterpenoids, and tetraterpenoids. These metabolites are normally used in pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and cosmeceuticals industries as raw materials for the production of medicines, foods, and cosmetics.

  • Yogesh Goyal

    Yogesh Goyal is an Assistant Professor of Cell & Developmental Biology at the Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Yogesh received his B.Tech. with Honors in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, and his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering focusing on quantitative developmental biology from Princeton University. Yogesh pursued postdoctoral work in single-cell systems and synthetic biology in Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. Yogesh’s major honors include Burroughs Wellcome Fund CASI Award, Schmidt Science Fellowship, STAT Wunderkind, and the Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship. Yogesh’s group combines theory, computation, and single-cell resolved experiments to track and control cellular plasticity and fate choices in developing tissues and cancer.

  • Bojing Jiang

  • Wilson Sinclair

    Wilson Sinclair is a Postdoctoral Scholar at EBRC working in the Security focus area. His primary interests are synthetic biology investment, biosecurity policy, building a robust bioeconomy, and microbiome engineering. He is passionate about breaking down barriers between research disciplines and building bridges between experts in engineering biology and social sciences across academia, industry, government, and advocacy to solve complex global problems.

    Prior to joining EBRC, Wilson was a Science Policy Intern at the NIH Office of Science Policy where he supported short- and long-term development of programs relating to bioethics, data science, and clinical research policy. His graduate research utilized bioorthogonal chemistry to study host-pathogen interactions in tuberculosis for therapeutic discovery. Over nearly a decade at the bench, he has applied his broad skills as a chemical biologist to several projects across the fields of glycobiology, synthetic chemistry, cancer immunology, and epitranscriptomics.

    Wilson holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Stanford University. He also has a B.A. from Haverford College majoring in Chemistry with a Biochemistry concentration and Spanish minor. He is a Chicago native and enjoys spending his free time trying new restaurants, solving puzzles, and exploring museums.

  • Caroline Ajo-Franklin

    Caroline Ajo-Franklin earned a B.S. in chemistry from Emory University in Atlanta, GA in 1997 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA in 2004. She trained as Postdoctoral Fellow with Prof. Pam Silver in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School in Cambridge, MA from 2005-2007. From 2007-2019, she was a Staff Scientist within the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA. In 2019, she joined the faculty of Rice University in Houston, TX as a Professor of BioSciences with joint appointments in Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Her strongly interdisciplinary, highly collaborative research program focuses on exploring the interface between living organisms and non-living materials and engineering this interface for applications in energy, environment, and biomedicine. Prof. Ajo-Franklin was named as a recipient of the Women@ the Lab award in 2018 and as Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) Scholar in 2019. She is on the Editorial Board of ACS Synthetic Biology and is an Editor at mSystems.

  • Cynthia Ni

    Cynthia is a fan of microbes and their potential to help humans live sustainably. She completed a PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT in 2022, in which she genetically engineered E. coli to utilize mixed feed streams for biosynthesis – a project motivated by the desire to convert food waste into useful products. Outside of research, she participated in departmental DEI initiatives and peer counseling, and was dedicated to improving the graduate student experience across the institute. In her free time, she enjoys playing ultimate frisbee, being in nature, and consuming delicious foods and beverages. Cynthia is excited to work in the Policy & International Engagement focus area and continue to explore the use of waste in the bioeconomy.

  • Jimmy Gollihar

    I am a Scientist and Head of the Laboratory of Antibody Discovery & Accelerated Protein Therapeutics (ADAPT) at the Houston Methodist Research Institute (HMRI). My work encompasses a broad range of engineering biology, from the design of simple genetic “parts” and circuits to protein engineering and industrial biomanufacturing. I use a foundation in synthetic biology to domesticate non-model organisms and then use these tools and chasses to engineer proteins or biosynthetic pathways with therapeutic and industrial potential. I use a holistic approach to protein engineering by employing concepts in directed evolution, rational design, and artificial intelligence to create biological countermeasures, diagnostics, and vaccine candidates. Over the last few years, my group has been involved in the genomic surveillance and characterization of SARS-COV-2, B-cell repertoire mining for neutralization and protection assays, and the engineering of enzymes for use in mRNA vaccine manufacturing.

    I also spent the last four years as a DoD scientist. In that time, I designed and built the Army’s Biological Foundry co-located at the University of Texas at Austin. This work increased DoD capability in the field of synthetic biology for early-stage research efforts. From 2019 to 2021, I also served as the government CTO of the Bioindustrial Manufacturing Innovation Institute– BioMADE. As the technical architect of the institute, I led the creation of a public-private partnership to develop innovations at scale for biological production of non-medical products. Prior to that, I led an in-house R&D effort in the private sector.

  • Jason Kang

  • Aaron Schaller

    Aaron Schaller is a molecular biologist and entrepreneur with 10 years of experience in microbiology, molecular and cell biology, and immunology/virology. In May 2020 he co-founded MeliBio, Inc., a food company harnessing synthetic biology and medicinal plant science to produce the world’s first real honey without bees. Before starting MeliBio, Aaron completed his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley studying innate immunity in response to viral infection as an NSF graduate fellow. A combined passion for food, environmentalism, microbiology, and entrepreneurship led Aaron to co-found MeliBio, where he currently serves as CTO. Aaron believes that the future of planetary and human health lies in our ability to move away from animal-based food supplies towards more sustainable and logical options, and that microbiology can take us there.

  • Ryuichi Hirota

    I am interested in the biosafety measure for the safer use of genetically modified bacteria. By controlling bacterial growth and survival using the engineered metabolic pathway for phosphorus, we developed novel biocontainment strategy which is robust, economical, and easy to apply.

  • Abhilash Patel

  • Luis Figueroa

    Degree in Biology from the Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. Master’s degree in Bioethics from the Anahuac University, Mexico. Doctorate in Sciences from the Scientific Research Center of Yucatán A.C., Mérida, Yucatán. Mexico. Postdoctoral fellow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. St.Louis Missouri, United States.
    Currently:
    -Titular Type A Researcher at the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ), Zapopan Headquarters. Department of Industrial Biotechnology, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. Distinction by the National System of Researchers (SNI I).
    -General Coordinator of the “National Network of Synthetic Biology of Mexico”.
    -Coordinator of the research sub-line “Synthetic Biology” within the Department of Industrial Biotechnology of the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ). In the working group, state-of-the-art sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) is performed in yeast and bioinformatic analysis of omics data (genome, transcriptome, metagenome). Design of transformation systems through synthesis and Gibson assembly. We use CRISPR-Cas9, dCas9 and Cas13, in order to edit or regulate genes to check functionality in cell lines of animals, bacteria, yeast, marine organisms and plants.

  • Meagan Olsen

    Meagan is a PhD candidate in the Jewett and Tullman-Ercek Labs at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on improving cell-free protein synthesis systems in order to rapidly develop and manufacture medical therapeutics. She completed her B.S. in chemical engineering at the University of Arkansas. Outside of the lab, Meagan enjoys cooking, reading, and hiking.

  • Benjamin Woolston

    Dr. Woolston joined the NEU Chemical Engineering department as an Assistant Professor in January 2020. As an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, Dr. Woolston received his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 2017 from MIT under the guidance of Prof. Greg Stephanopoulos, where his research focused on the development of genetic tools to enable metabolic engineering in anaerobic CO2-fixing microbes, and the establishment of a methanol utilization pathway in the model organism Escherichia coli. While at MIT, he was an inaugural Fellow of the Chemical Engineering Communication Lab, where he provided peer tutoring and department-wide workshops to assist students and post-docs with aspects of scientific communication. His Post-doctoral work was conducted in the laboratory of Prof. Emily Balskus in the Chemistry & Chemical Biology department at Harvard University, where he studied microbial metabolic pathways and enzymes that contribute to the stability of health-associated Lactobacilli in the human vaginal microbiota. At Northeastern, his research program combines approaches from his previous research training in metabolic engineering, synthetic biology, biochemistry and microbiology to engineer microbes for biofuel & biochemical production, and as diagnostics and therapeutics in the Human gut microbiota. His lab team currently consists of five PhD students and five undergraduates. Since joining NEU, Dr. Woolston has taught the Biochemical Engineering senior elective (CHME 5630) and the graduate course in Kinetics & Reactor Design (CHME 7340). He was the winner of the 2020 IMES Jay Bailey Award young investigator award, as well as the 2021 Biotechnology & Bioengineering Daniel I.C. Wang award.

  • Luis Figueroa-Yáñez

    Degree in Biology from the Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. Master’s degree in Bioethics from the Anahuac University, Mexico. Doctorate in Sciences from the Scientific Research Center of Yucatán A.C., Mérida, Yucatán. Mexico. Postdoctoral fellow at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center. St.Louis Missouri, United States.
    Currently:
    -Titular Type A Researcher at the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ), Zapopan Headquarters. Department of Industrial Biotechnology, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico. Distinction by the National System of Researchers (SNI I).
    -General Coordinator of the “National Network of Synthetic Biology of Mexico”.
    -Coordinator of the research sub-line “Synthetic Biology” within the Department of Industrial Biotechnology of the Center for Research and Assistance in Technology and Design of the State of Jalisco A.C. (CIATEJ). In the working group, state-of-the-art sequencing (Oxford Nanopore Technologies) is performed in yeast and bioinformatic analysis of omics data (genome, transcriptome, metagenome). Design of transformation systems through synthesis and Gibson assembly. We use CRISPR-Cas9, dCas9 and Cas13, in order to edit or regulate genes to check functionality in cell lines of animals, bacteria, yeast, marine organisms and plants.

  • Devaki Bhaya

  • Chad Haynes

    Chad Haynes is the Director of Government Strategy and Technology Partnerships at LanzaTech, Inc. In this role, he works across the company’s science, engineering, and government relations teams to help coordinate and design R&D projects with mutual interest and benefit to Federal agencies and offices. Additionally, his role involves engagement with policy and regulatory stakeholders to help accelerate the deployment of sustainable technologies. Prior to joining LanzaTech, Dr. Haynes was a Lead Associate at Booz Allen Hamilton, serving as a technology and management consultant to U.S. Dept. of Energy ARPA-E and the U.S. Biomass R&D Board. He previously served as an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow at the USDA ARS. He holds a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Kentucky, and completed postdoctoral training at Caltech.

  • Natalie Gogotsi

    Natalie Gogotsi is a Materials Engineer at Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (Skunk Works) as part of the Revolutionary Technology Program. She received a joint B.S./M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Drexel University with a minor in Materials Science and Engineering. She then went on to receive her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania where her research focused on developing quantum dots for optical applications. Since joining Lockheed Martin in early 2020 she’s become heavily involved in the Engineered Biology Portfolio, helping grow the portfolio as both a technical contributor and project lead. In addition to the Engineered Biology work, she also works on topic areas including metamaterials and other advanced materials.

  • Adam Woomer

    Dr. Adam Woomer is a materials scientist at the Advanced Technology Center in Lockheed Martin Space, which specializes in the incorporation of advanced materials into next-generation devices and applications. In collaboration with the Army Research Laboratory, Dr. Woomer is currently applying his materials expertise to the field of synthetic biology, with a particular focus on the self-assembly and design of novel materials for protective coatings and optical technologies. Before joining Lockheed Martin in 2019, he received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2018 and his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Connecticut in 2013.

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