SPA Board
Jon Arizti Sans
Jon Arizti Sanz is a Schmidt Science Fellow in the Hill-Maini Lab at Stanford University. His research work at Stanford involves engineering fungi to transform agricultural and food waste into […]
More →Leah Davis
Leah is a postdoctoral research fellow in bioengineering and marine biotechnology at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Her current work centers on the development of rapid, in-situ whole-cell […]
More →Yunqing Wang
Yunqing Wang is a bioengineering PhD candidate in the Demirer Lab at Caltech. Her research focuses on developing plant genome engineering tools and engineering plant-microbe communication channels. As Mentorship Chair, […]
More →Abhishek Kumar Sen
Abhishek Kumar Sen earned his Ph.D. in Cellular, Molecular, and Structural Biology from Miami University in 2025. He brings over 8 years of combined research experience across academia and industry, […]
More →Ruixue Zhang
Ruixue is a Ph.D. candidate in Prof. Fuzhong Zhang’s Lab at Washington University in St. Louis. Ruixue specializes in bacterial stress response mechanisms, utilizing advanced gene engineering techniques, microscopy, and […]
More →Talia Jacobson
Talia is a Ph.D. student advised by Catalin Voiniciuc at the University of Florida, where her research focuses on utilizing synthetic yeast systems to understand and engineer plant cell wall […]
More →Neil Dalvie
Neil Dalvie did his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT, studying therapeutic protein manufacturing. Now, he is a Schmidt Science Fellow in the Synthetic Biology Hive at Harvard Medical School. […]
More →Cameron Roots
Cameron is a recent graduate and postdoctoral fellow in the Barrick Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his B.S. in biochemistry and in molecular, cellular, and […]
More →Efrain Rodriguez-Ocasio
Efrain Rodriguez Ocasio is originally from Puerto Rico and graduated from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez with a B.S. in Industrial Biotechnology. During his undergraduate studies, Efrain served as a […]
More →Meagan Olsen
Meagan is a PhD candidate in the Jewett and Karim Labs at Northwestern University. Her research focuses on improving cell-free protein synthesis systems in order to rapidly develop and manufacture […]
More →Michaela Jones
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 […]
More →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 […]
More →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 […]
More →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 […]
More →Alexandra “Lex” Patterson
Lex is currently a 3rd year bioengineering Ph.D. student at Georgia tech researching cell-free diagnostics. In the past, she has worked to establish large scale educational outreach events to encourage students […]
More →Arren Liu
Arren Liu is a postdoctoral research fellow at Johns Hopkins University working with Dr. Jonathan Lynch on unravelling host-microbiota interactions and engineering microbiota for health applications. Arren received his B.S. […]
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