My role at Corteva is as a molecular biologist working to enhance and develop new technologies for making recombination DNA vectors. But, I was an academic grad student and postdoc before teaching college biology for 9 years. Then I joined Corteva in 2016. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/slgasior/)
I am currently a third year PhD Candidate in the Biochemistry Molecular Biology and Biophysics (BMBB) program at the University of Minnesota Twin-Cities. Before I joined the BMBB program, I graduated from Southwestern University, in Georgetown Texas, with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry in 2016. I then spent 3 years as a Lab Technician for Eco-Services in Houston Texas, which is a subsidiary of PQ Corporation specializing in sulfuric acid manufacturing.
Michaela is a postdoctoral researcher in Otto Cordero’s Lab at MIT working to expand the metabolic function of non-model ocean microbes. Prior to starting her postdoc, she completed her graduate work with Aditya Kunjapur at University of Delaware where she developed a new pathway for biosynthesis of non-standard amino acids and engineered a bacterial strain that was dependent on a non-standard amino acid for growth that can persist in soil microenvironments to build towards safely deployable synthetic microbes. As an EBRC board member, she serves as EMUMS chair to help provide academic mentorship to undergraduate and Master’s students interested in engineering biology.
Sanjeeva is a PhD student in Mansell lab at Iowa state university. His research work focuses on developing novel prebiotic-probiotic pairs for gut microbiome engineer. Prior to this, he completed his masters from IIT Guwahati, where he focused on constructing metabolic pathway to convert dairy waste to D-Lactic acid. Currently, he serves as a member of the EBRC SPA Board and works as the liaison to the Policy and International Engagement group. In addition, he also worked as a downstream process engineer for monoclonal antibody purification at Dr. Reddy Laboratories in India. Outside research, he enjoys watching cricket, playing badminton, running etc.
Edward is a postdoctoral fellow in the Ben Shen lab at UF Scripps. His research focuses on developing and utilizing synthetic biology approaches for natural product discovery and biosynthetic engineering, with an emphasis on biosynthetic gene cluster regulation. Prior to his postdoctoral position, he obtained his Ph.D. in the Gavin Williams lab at North Carolina State University where he engineered polyketide synthases and constructed transcription factor-based biosensors.
Dr. Keith R. Yamamoto is vice chancellor for science policy and strategy, director of precision medicine, and professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology at UCSF. After earning his PhD from Princeton University, Yamamoto joined the UCSF faculty in 1976. His research has focused on signaling and transcriptional regulation by nuclear receptors; he uses mechanistic and systems approaches to pursue these problems in pure molecules, cells and whole organisms. He has led or served on numerous national committees focused on public and scientific policy, public understanding and support of biological research, science education, and diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism; he currently chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences, co-chairs the NASEM Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science, and sits on the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science, the Board of Directors of Rapid Science, the Governing Board of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the Board of Counselors for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation, and the Advisory Board for Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has chaired or served on many committees that oversee training and the biomedical workforce, research funding, and the process of peer review and the policies that govern it at NIH. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
I’m Jeff Nivala, a Research Assistant Professor in the Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. I work closely with other faculty and students as part of the Molecular Information Systems Lab. My scientific interests are focused on technology development with molecular and synthetic biology. My post-doctoral work was performed in George Church’s lab at Harvard Medical School. I was a graduate student fellow of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) as a PhD student in the UCSC Nanopore Group with Mark Akeson, and a Washington Research Foundation Fellow in David Baker’s lab during my undergraduate work.
Gregory D. Koblentz is an Associate Professor and Director of the Biodefense Graduate Program at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government. The Biodefense Graduate Program is a multidisciplinary research and education program designed to prepare students to work on issues at the nexus of health, science, and security. He also directs the Summer Workshop on Pandemics and Global Health Security at the Schar School and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Pandora Report. Dr. Koblentz is a member of the Scientist Working Group on Biological and Chemical Security at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington, DC. He serves as a pro bono advisor for the Open Society Justice Initiative and DARPA, as a consultant for the Stimson Center on their cheminformatics program, and is a member of the Biothreat Advisory Board of Heat Biologics. Dr. Koblentz is the author of Strategic Stability in the Second Nuclear Age (Council on Foreign Relations, 2014) and Living Weapons: Biological Warfare and International Security (Cornell University Press, 2009) and co-author of Mapping Maximum Biological Containment Labs Globally (London: King’s College London, May 2021), Editing Biosecurity: Needs and Strategies for Governing Genome Editing (George Mason University and Stanford University, 2018), and Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998). His research and teaching focus on understanding the causes and consequences of the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons to state and non-state actors and the impact of emerging technologies on international security. He received a PhD in political science from MIT and a MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.
Andrea is a postdoctoral research associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Dr. Carrie Eckert’s lab, working to domesticate non-model bacteria. As part of that, she is developing high-throughput methods to test genetic tools with robotic automation systems. Prior to this, Andrea earned her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Cell Biology at Rice University, where she developed a bacterial transcriptional activation system in the lab of Dr. James Chappell.
David has been a Wellcome Trust/Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow in the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College London since 2019. His lab uses a combination of synthetic biology, imaging and sequencing based approaches to better understand the function of the gut and its microbiota during health and disease. Using this knowledge they are developing innovative technologies, such as living engineered probiotics, to probe and control the mammalian gut environment.
Prior to starting his lab, David undertook his postdoc in Pamela Silver’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. As a Human Frontier Science Long-term Fellow and NHMRC/ RG Menzies Fellow, David’s work focussed on using synthetic biology approaches to engineer bacteria as tools to probe the mammalian gut environment.
In 2013, David completed his PhD with Jake Baum and Alan Cowman at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (University of Melbourne) in Melbourne, Australia. His PhD research investigated how the parasites responsible for human malaria disease infect red blood cells using cutting-edge imaging platforms.
David holds a Bachelor of Science (Honours) from the University of Melbourne.
Yue is a Ph.D. candidate at the Styczynski lab at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research is focused on developing computational models for metabolic pathways toward effective strain design. Yue completed her undergraduate studies at Carnegie Mellon University in Chemical Engineering. In her free time, she enjoys watching movies and exploring the city.
Megan is a postdoctoral scholar in the Jewett Lab at Stanford University. She earned her BS in chemical engineering from the University of Rhode Island—with minors in chemistry, mathematics, and music performance—and her PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Georgia Tech. Her PhD work focused on using cell-free expression systems to engineer diagnostic platforms for point-of-care biosensing applications. As an EBRC SPA member, Megan serves as a liaison to the education working group and co-chair for EMUMS.
Josh is a postdoctoral fellow in Moh El-Naggar’s lab at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on using synthetic biology and protein engineering to control electron transport in biological systems. Josh is a member of the EBRC Student and Postdoc Association Board and works as a liaison to the education working group.
Ying-Chiang is a graduate student in the Donia Lab at Princeton University. He currently works on the capture and characterization of novel bioactive microbiome-derived peptides, particularly focusing on host-microbe interactions. The long term goal is to engineer therapeutic peptides from natural templates. Before coming to Princeton, Ying-Chiang completed his undergraduate work at Washington University in St. Louis where he worked in the Moon Lab and Virgin Lab. He then completed an MPH specializing in Global Health followed by an MEng.
Leah is a Biomedical Engineering Ph.D. student in the Daringer Lab at Rowan University. Her research focuses on engineering mammalian cell-based biosensors for the detection of extracellular ligands. Before starting graduate school, she received her undergraduate degree in Energy Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University, where she completed four internships and worked full-time for a year post graduation. If she’s not in the lab you can find her with her pug, Nugget.
Yan is a postdoctoral fellow co-advised by William (Bil) Clemons and Richard Murray at Caltech, where she applies cell-free synthetic biology to engineer bacterial viruses for therapeutic applications and precision microbial control. Yan received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University (2017) and her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology (2022). As a board member of the SPA and the co-liaison for the Policy and International Engagement (P&IE) working group, she is committed to helping to build connections between researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders to advance the application and reach of engineering biology research.
As a graduate student in the Dunlop Lab at Boston University, Eric is developing optogenetic tools and feedback control strategies to improve how heterologous metabolic pathways integrate with native host cell physiologies. He is broadly interested in how synthetic biology and computer-aided techniques are being combined to accelerate the design of engineered microbes.
The Truong lab uses principles from synthetic and systems biology, cell fate reprogramming, epigenetics, and immunology. He and his team “rewrite” the human genome in induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to build cell therapies and regenerative medicine. The group is developing an off-the-shelf chassis iPSC that can be given to any person without immune rejection. This chassis iPSC will enable large-scale restructuring of the human genome, introduction of large and more sophisticated genetic circuits for cell programming, and the production of any somatic cell for living therapies. The group currently focuses on developing programmable off-the-shelf Dendritic Cells from human iPSCs as an immunotherapy platform.