Profiles

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Ian Ehrenreich

    My lab studies how genomes encode organisms’ phenotypes. To do this, we use techniques from genetics, molecular systems biology, and synthetic biology. In the area of synthetic biology, we have developed new approaches for building synthetic chromosomes from natural DNA.

  • Chelsea Hu

    I’m a new faculty at Texas A&M studying synthetic biology and control theory. Before moving to Texas, I completed four years of postdoctoral training in the Richard Murray Group at Caltech. I received my Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Cornell University in 2018, advised by Julius B. Lucks.

  • Ava Karanjia

    Ava Karanjia is a current PhD student and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in Chemical Engineering at the University of Washington, where her research focuses on building transcriptional programs in bacteria. Ava is working on expanding CRISPRa technologies to improve methods of transcriptional signal conversion and transduction. She is also pursuing data science and astrobiology graduate certificates. Ava has undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering and microbiology from Arizona State University, where she worked on quorum sensing regulatory systems and other transcriptional activators. She has also worked at NASA Ames Research Center, where she screened and engineered non-traditional yeast candidates for in-situ microbial space technologies. Ava is a big proponent of science communication and has been actively involved in outreach efforts at the University of Washington and EBRC.

  • Seung Hwan “Allen” Lee

    Seung Hwan “Allen” Lee received Ph.D. in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Rice University and is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Ramon Gonzalez’s lab at the University of South Florida. Allen has a strong passion in leveraging the capabilities of engineering biology to convert waste molecules into value-added products in a sustainable way. He has a special interest in engineering one-carbon (C1) metabolism for efficient utilization of C1 feedstock in biomanufacturing. In his free time, he loves to listen to classical music and play squash.

  • Samuel MD Oliveira

    I am a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the director of the Oliveira Lab (www.oliveiralab.me), a recently created research group at Boston University (BU). In addition, I am the Senior Manager of the DAMP lab (www.damplab.org) at BU.

    The Oliveira lab investigates the emergence of microbial community complexity and their underlying interactions in varying environmental contexts and studies microbial community design principles and metrics to help build novel collective behaviors. We hope that breakthroughs in computational and synthetic biology methods will accelerate our knowledge of the links between genetic sequences and intercellular communication to study and engineer the spatiotemporal behavior of biological networks. Among my key collaborators: i) Prof. Chris Voigt (MIT) for improving the predictive DNA design automation tool named Cello (Genetic Circuit Design Automation with Cello 2.0. Nature Protocols).

    In my early career, I have published more than 30 articles in journals, conference proceedings, and book chapters, acted as the guest Editor for JoVE, and as a reviewer for Nat. Comm., ACS Synth. Biol., Synth. Biol. J., among others. In addition, I have directly supervised and co-supervised 7 research staff, 7 graduate students (none of whom received their Ph.D. with me), 3 master’s students, and over 14 undergraduates. I was one of the recipients of the Sao Paulo Foundation’s Best Innovative Biotech Product Award in 2019. Based on that, I co-founded a commercial synthetic biology, automation-based company named Doroth (www.doroth.com.br) in Brazil.

    Currently, with the support from a $1.4M NSF grant, BU’s Professor Douglas Densmore (co-PI), Prof. Andrews (PI) from UMass Amherst, and my team (technical lead support) are teaming up on an ambitious effort to create microscopic, programmable “living devices” which can detect and neutralize specific toxic contaminants found in drinking water.

  • 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.

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