SPA Board

Ruchi Singh

Xave Bower

Xave Bower graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a B.S. in Molecular Engineering, and a background in immunoengineering research. They spent 4 years in R&D at BillionToOne, […]

Stella Anastasakis

Stella Anastasakis graduated from the University of Washington in 2025 with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, where she worked on tool development for engineering non-model microbes. Stella is now a […]

Pallavi Ramaswamy

Pallavi Ramaswamy is a 3rd-year PhD student in the Genome Science and Technology (GST) program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville working with Dr. Ilenne del Valle and Dr. Carrie […]

Yejun Kim

Yejun Kim graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering. After exploring process engineering (AbbVie), fungal phylogenomics (The Field Museum), and strain development (LanzaTech), she is currently a […]

Mia Giallorenzi

Mia Giallorenzi graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.E. in Biomedical Engineering. She is now a third year PhD student in Molecular Engineering and a NSF GRFP fellow at University […]

Kathryn Myers

Kathryn (Kat) Myers is a fifth-year PhD Candidate in Bioengineering at Stanford University in the lab of Dr. Mike Jewett, where her work centers on protein engineering for sustainable, accessible […]

Sudarshan GC

Sudarshan GC completed his masters in synthetic biology and microfluidics from Universite Paris Cite and PSL Research University, France. He is now a PhD fellow at IIT, Italy, working on […]

Muhammad Mubashar Beig

Muhammad Mubashar Beig is a veterinarian-microbiologist and PhD researcher at UVAS, Pakistan, specializing in pathogen genomics, arbovirus surveillance, antimicrobial resistance, and One Health. His research integrates qRT-PCR, next-generation sequencing, bioinformatics, […]

Felicia Oentoro

Felicia Oentoro is a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech advised by Mark Styczynski. Her research focuses on developing diagnostic platforms using synthetic biology. Beyond work, she enjoys being outside and […]

Glory J. Onajobi-Lee

Glory J. Onajobi-Lee is a bioengineering Ph.D. candidate in the Wilson Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Emory University and her M.S. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Efraín Rodríguez 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 […]

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 […]

Megan McSweeney

Megan is a Stanford Synthetic Biology Postdoctoral Fellow advised by Michael Jewett in the Bioengineering Department. Her research uses multiplex genome engineering and cell-free protein synthesis to study and engineer […]

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 […]

Arren Liu

Arren Liu is a postdoctoral fellow in the Özçam Lab at the Center for Advanced Microbiome Research and Innovation (CAMRI) Center at UMB. He received a B.S. in Genetics at […]