Women in EB

  • Elisa Franco

    Elisa Franco

    I am a controls engineer turned nanotechnologist. My degrees are from the University of Trieste (Italy), and Caltech (CA, USA). Our research group is interested in designing dynamic processes and materials out of biological molecules with the aid of computational models.

  • Claudia Vickers

    Claudia is Director of CSIRO’s Synthetic Biology Future Science Platform (SynBioFSP), a highly collaborative R&D program aimed at expanding Australia’s synthetic biology capability and developing national synthetic biology-based industry. The SynBioFSP works across disciplinary boundaries, exploring both synthetic biology innovation and the social, legal, ethical and institutional issues surrounding bringing this innovation to impact. Her personal research focuses on sustainable alternatives to petrochemicals and other industrial/agricultural products using bio-based solutions. She applies synthetic biology to engineer living cells, re-programming them for production of useful biochemicals or to act as sense/response systems for environmental monitoring and remediation. Her current work is primarily in microbes, but she has a background in plant molecular biology, abiotic stress, and applied plant engineering. She played a leading role in establishing synthetic biology as a field in Australia; she was founding President of Synthetic Biology Australia and co-authored Australia’s national synthetic biology roadmap (delivered by the Australian Council of Learned Academies). She is on the Executive of the International Society for Isoprenoids (TERPNET) and serves on editorial boards for eight international journals. She represents Australia at international strategy and policy fora (US, Asia-Pacific, OECD, World Economic Forum) and sits on the Scientific Advisory Boards for several international synthetic biology institutes and for Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ). She co-chairs the World Economic Forum Synthetic Biology Future Council. She is experienced in working across disciplinary boundaries and with industry partners.

    Professor Vickers holds a PhD from The University of Queensland and is an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology and Griffith University.

  • Laura Segatori

    Laura Segatori develops innovative, system-level strategies based on the integration of synthetic biology, protein engineering, and bionanotechnology to reprogram the cellular quality control system in mammalian cells. The approaches allow for a broader understanding and control over the molecular mechanisms that regulate protein processing for applications ranging from development of cell-based therapies to the production of biologics.

    For nearly two decades, Segatori’s research efforts have focused on understanding and characterizing the elaborate molecular and cellular pathways that cope with protein misfolding. To this end, the Segatori group combines experimental approaches and predictive modeling to create genetic circuits that perturb and reprogram innate cellular pathways that mediate protein processing and promote degradation and recycling of aberrant cellular components.

    Significant research has involved the development of protein engineering toolkits designed to unlock, probe, and manipulate the chaperone and degradation processes. Knowledge from these studies has led to more recent efforts focused on engineering nanoparticles to serve as a delivery systems and nanotherapeutics to enhance the clearance of toxic materials that accumulate in association with the development of a range of human diseases. The therapeutic strategies are validated using the group’s in vitro model systems of loss of function and gain of function diseases.

    Segatori’s research has led to 36 peer-reviewed journal publications, two patents and three patent applications. She has been awarded numerous competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants, including an NSF CAREER Award (2013) to engineer cellular clearance pathways using nanoparticles, and several Hamill Innovation Awards (2009, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2017), and a Medical Innovation Award (2010) from Rice’s Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering.

  • Kate Galloway

    Kate E Galloway is an assistant professor at MIT in the department of Chemical Engineering. Katie Galloway earned her BS in Chemical Engineering from UC Berkeley, PhD in Chemical Engineering at Caltech, and did her postdoc at USC Stem Cell before starting at MIT in the summer of 2019. As a chemical engineer working in molecular systems biology, her research focuses on elucidating the fundamental principles of integrating synthetic circuitry to drive cellular behaviors. Her lab focuses on developing integrated gene circuits and elucidating the systems-level principles that govern complex cellular behaviors. Her team leverages synthetic biology to transform how we understand cellular transitions and engineer cellular therapies. Her research has been featured in Science, Cell Stem Cell, Cell Systems, and Development. She has won multiple fellowships and awards including the NIH F32 and Caltech’s Everhart Award.

  • Renee Wegrzyn

    Renee is a Vice President of Business Development at Ginkgo Bioworks. Prior to Ginkgo, she was Program Manager in the Biological Technologies Office (BTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where she leveraged the tools of synthetic biology and gene editing to enhance biosecurity, support the domestic bioeconomy, and outpace infectious disease. Her DARPA portfolio included the Living Foundries: 1000 Molecules, Safe Genes, Preemptive Expression of Protective Alleles and Response Elements (PREPARE), and Detect it with Gene Editing (DIGET) programs. Prior to joining DARPA as a PM, Renee led teams in private industry in the areas of biosecurity, gene therapies, emerging infectious disease, neuromodulation, synthetic biology, and diagnostics. Renee holds a PhD and BS in Applied Biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, was a Fellow in the Center for Health Security Emerging Leaders in Biosecurity Initiative (ELBI), and completed her postdoctoral training as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Heidelberg, Germany.

  • Heba Sailem

    Dr Heba Sailem is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Big Data Institute. Her expertise transcends computer vision, image informatics, and system genetics which allows her to bring a unique perspective to tackling important challenges in cancer biology. She has pioneered the use of computational methods for knowledge discovery from large scale imaging data. Her work includes developing image analysis algorithms, image informatics, data visualisation and integration.

  • R. Alta Charo

    R. Alta Charo (Harvard, BA biology 1979; Columbia, JD law 1982) is a 2019-2020 Berggruen Fellow at CASBS, and the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, writing on medical ethics and biotechnology regulatory policy. In government, she served as a legal analyst for the former congressional Office of Technology Assessment, policy analyst for the US Agency for International Development and senior policy advisor in the FDA’s Office of the Commissioner. She was a member of the National Bioethics Advisory Commission under President Clinton, and the transition team for President Obama. Charo is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and co-chaired its committee on Guidelines for Embryonic Stem Cell Research and its 2017 committee on Human Genome Editing: Science, Ethics and Governance. At present, she is a member of the World Health Organization’s committee on global governance of genome editing, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative’s Biosecurity Innovation and Risk Reduction project, and of the steering committee of the International Society for Stem Cell Research’s effort to revise and expand its guidelines for ethical research, including research on chimeras and organoids.

  • Alanna Schepartz

  • Gigi Gronvall

    Gigi Gronvall is a Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Dr. Gronvall is the author of the book Synthetic Biology: Safety, Security, and Promise, published in fall 2016 (Health Security Press) and Preparing for Bioterrorism: The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Leadership in Biosecurity. (2013) She is a member of the Novel and Exceptional Technology and Research Advisory Committee (NExTRAC) which provides recommendations to the NIH Director and is a public forum for the discussion of the scientific, safety, and ethical issues associated with emerging biotechnologies. Dr. Gronvall is a member of the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee (TRAC), which provides the Secretary of Defense with independent advice and recommendations on reducing the risk to the United States, its military forces, and its allies and partners posed by nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional threats. She served as the Science Advisor for the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism from April 2009 until February 2010. Dr. Gronvall is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security, and is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Dr. Gronvall received a BS in biology from Indiana University, Bloomington, worked as a protein chemist at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University for work on T-cell receptor/MHC I interactions.

  • Deepti Tanjore

    At ABPDU, our passion for bio-innovation drives us. Every day. Whether we’re evaluating biomass, experimenting with microorganisms, optimizing new processes, or performing assays and analyses, our end goal never changes. Simply put, we want to enable you to successfully take your bio-innovation to market.

    We’ve been operational since 2012, collaborating with researchers in the bio-products industry, the National Labs, and academia to optimize and scale technologies to enable the commercialization of bio-based chemicals, materials, and fuels.

  • Mary Dunlop

    control theory, stochastic gene expression, gene regulatory networks, feedback

  • Anne Meyer

    The Meyer lab performs research targeted at re-engineering bacteria to synthesize bio-inspired materials with improved properties. This approach has the potential to replace traditional chemical approaches that require extreme environmental conditions, expensive equipment, and the generation of hazardous waste. As a first step we have targeted bacterial production of patterned artificial nacre, a biomineralized material lining seashells that combines high mechanical strength with high fracture toughness. Combination of our biological materials-producing systems with our newly developed 3D bacterial printers will allow the rapid and straight-forward production of spatially structured biomaterials.

  • Kathleen Vogel

    policy, biosecurity, defense applications

  • Melissa Rhoads

    biological sciences, cell and molecular biology, project management, systems engineering, technical writing, team building

  • Arti Rai

    intellectual property, policy, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals

  • Jackie Quinn

    bioengineering, design languages, computer aided design, computational tools

  • Kristala Prather

    metabolic engineering, metabolic flux, bioprocess engineering

  • Caroline Peres

    microbial physiology, fermentation engineering, metabolic engineering, molecular biology

  • Pamela Peralta-Yahya

    metabolic engineering, chemical synthesis, biosensors, biofuels, alkaloids, microbial synthesis

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