Profiles

  • Gregory Koblentz

    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.

  • Kelsey Gray

  • Andrea Garza Elizondo

    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 Riglar

    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 Han

    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 McSweeney

    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.

  • Joshua Atkinson

    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 Jeffrey Lee

    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 Davis

    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 Zhang

    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.

  • Eric J. South

    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.

  • David Truong

    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.

  • Nicole Buan

    Nicole Buan is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and has broad expertise in microbial physiology, metabolism, and redox biochemistry. Dr. Buan recently co-founded the Archaea Power Hour virtual seminar series and serves as Associate Editor for Applied Environmental Microbiology and Frontiers in Microbiology (Microbial Physiology and Metabolism) journals. Dr. Buan began research as a high school student in Tucson, Arizona, where she did undergraduate thesis research on ATP-independent molecular chaperone proteins in plants under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Vierling at the University of Arizona. She received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow in the lab of Jorge Escalante-Semerena. There, she made key contributions to understanding protein:protein interactions involved in coenzyme B12 synthesis in Salmonella, discovered the only known iron-sulfur-cluster-containing B12 adenosyltransferase enzyme, and investigated the use of B12 mimics as chemotherapeutic “Trojan horses”. Her graduate work was recognized by the Department of Bacteriology Herman Smythe Award for Outstanding PhD research. As a NIH Kirschstein Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of William Metcalf at the University of Illinois, Dr. Buan received training in methanogen genetics and characterized the terminal oxidase heterodisulfide reductase enzymes. At Nebraska, Dr. Buan and her students study redox biochemistry, systems, and synthetic biology in archaea, bacteria, and plants on various projects funded by NSF, NIH, USDA, Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research, Nebraska Corn Board, and the Water Environment Reuse Foundation. Buan lab research has been awarded two patents, and Dr. Buan is the owner of two biotech startups.

  • Xiaojun Tian

    Dr. Xiaojun Tian received his Ph. D. degree in systems biology from Nanjing University in 2012 and spent five years as a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech and the University of Pittsburgh. In 2017, he joined the School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering at Arizona State University to start his lab and synthetic biology research. His lab has made outstanding achievements with several publications at Nature Chemical Biology, Nature Communications, and ACS synthetic biology. In addition, he recently received the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) award.

  • Janet Matsen

    Janet Matsen received her BS and PhD degrees in chemical engineering for synthetic biology with a data science specialty. She brings together knowledge of biochemistry, industrial biotechnology, and data science to accelerate the rate at which we can improve engineered microbes for renewable chemical production. Her work at Zymergen as a Senior Data Scientist involves developing software to predict which genetic edits will result in more productive microbes to help explore the DNA design space more efficiently.

  • Wendy Hall

    20 years senior government expert advisor in science policy and national security specializing in biological threats and life science research policy, both pre- and post- anthrax attacks
    14 years international experience in private sector multinational corporations and academia
    Interest in ways to streamline, simplify and modernizing current “jenga tower” of USG policies/regulations/rules/polices to enable robust growth in the U.S. bioeconomy while ensuring national security risks are addressed as appropriate.

  • Bryn Adams

    Bryn L. Adams received her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Biology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2009 which focused on the development of microbial based methane-oxidizing biomaterials to mitigate early methane emissions from open landfills. After receiving her doctorate, she joined a collaborative research project, as a National Academy of Sciences postdoctoral fellow, between Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) and the Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Research at the University of Maryland at College Park focused on the development of non-specific threat agent detection using simple biological sensing and signal transduction pathways. Dr. Adams first joined the US Army Research Laboratory in 2011 as an Oak Ridge Associated Universities postdoctoral fellow where she conducted research into the development of synthetic molecular recognition agents for biosensing and biomaterials and then became a federal scientist at the US Army Research Laboratory in 2014 and the team leader of the Synbio Tools and Chassis Team in 2018. Her research efforts currently focus on developing synthetic biology tools for non-model host bacteria and leveraging synthetic biology to wholly integrate microbes into biohybrid systems. She has published over 15 peer-reviewed manuscripts on a wide range of bacterial biotechnology topics across several disciplines.

  • Alexander Tobias

    I am a Biotechnology technical professional experienced with leading teams and prosecuting academic, industrial, and government research in the lab. My proudest accomplishments have been (1) the enzyme engineering work I performed on the DuPont/BP Butamax joint venture to develop an isobutanol-producing yeast, (2) the successful push to commercialize 24 ELISA assays as part of the V-PLEX team at Meso Scale Diagnostics, and (3) earning my doctorate as part of the laboratory of Frances Arnold (2018 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) at Caltech.

    DuPont Biotechnology R&D – 2005-2016
    Meso Scale Diagnostics Assay Development – 2016-2017
    US Army Research Laboratory – 2017-present

  • Eric Lin

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